Under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act, 2002, the Enforcement Directorate moved on 1 October 2026 to provisionally attach 211 immovable properties — carrying a combined valuation of roughly ₹646.58 crore — as part of its ongoing proceedings in the Pancard Clubs Limited and others money-laundering matter. Spread across multiple states and a Union Territory, the portfolio encompasses commercial office buildings, agricultural landholdings, residential properties, hotels, and resort destinations.
Attachment of those assets extended across a network that included Pancard Clubs Limited and Panoramic Universal Limited alongside their subsidiaries, connected family members, and individuals identified as beneficial owners, the agency disclosed. With this latest move, the cumulative worth of assets placed under provisional attachment through PMLA proceedings in the matter has reached around ₹700.89 crore.
According to findings put forward by the Enforcement Directorate, Pancard Clubs gathered a total of ₹9,577 crore in funds from investors across the two-decade span running from 1997-98 through to 2017-18. Out of the total, depositors received back ₹2,858 crore, while agents collected ₹2,332 crore in commissions, and a further ₹4,387 crore was neither returned nor paid out but instead held and channelled into what prosecutors have characterised as criminal proceeds.
A 2016 regulatory ruling — later affirmed by the Securities Appellate Tribunal the following year — documented that Pancard Clubs held paid-up share capital of roughly ₹50.12 lakh, a figure that stood alongside the approximately ₹7,035 crore it had gathered from participants through its holiday membership programmes. The tribunal drew attention to this disparity, pointing out that funds exceeding ₹1,000 crore had been channelled into the purchase of hotels and resorts.
Pancard Clubs argued in its defence that customers had purchased room nights and hospitality services, with no financial instruments involved in the transactions. Under the agreement's terms, a "surrender value" clause gave customers the option to hand back any unused room nights at the plan's conclusion in return for a payout exceeding what they had originally paid. Drawing on the fact that 97% of participants had chosen surrender value over hospitality services, the tribunal determined that a considerable share of the scheme's customers were motivated by financial gain rather than access to those non-monetary benefits.
The tribunal determined that the arrangements met every statutory requirement for classification as a Collective Investment Scheme. Custody of the funds remained with the company once collected, the tribunal observed, while those who had invested held no say in the day-to-day decisions governing how their money was put to use.
In October 2010, a public notice from SEBI put investors on alert that online platforms and blogs connected to Pancard Clubs and related entities were misrepresenting themselves as a division of the Panoramic Group and falsely characterising their offerings as carrying SEBI's endorsement — a claim the regulator flatly denied, adding that it had opened a review into whether those activities fell under Collective Investment Scheme rules.
A formal interim directive from SEBI, dated 31 July 2014, placed Pancard Clubs and its directors under a set of binding prohibitions — barring them from raising additional funds from the public, rolling out any new schemes, transferring or encumbering assets acquired through investor money, or redirecting those funds elsewhere — while also requiring them to submit a full account of assets built up using public capital. A SEBI directive dated 29 February 2016 required Pancard Clubs to return roughly ₹7,035 crore raised under its various schemes, with winding-up steps formalised under Recovery Certificate No. 1020 of 2016.
On 12 May 2017, the Securities Appellate Tribunal turned down all appeals that had been brought before it. Under Recovery Certificate No. 1020 of 2016, a series of enforcement steps unfolded — property attachments were imposed in successive rounds, shareholding interests were frozen, and e-auction proceedings were set in motion by SEBI.
Documents from SEBI's 2018 recovery proceedings listed Hotel United–21 in Thane alongside a range of offices and commercial units as properties scheduled to go under the hammer. A 2018 recovery matter involving a Goa hotel saw SEBI document that the attached asset had reportedly been leased out without the regulator's authorisation, a finding that did not halt proceedings — the body moved to confirm the sale after an e-auction returned a bid of roughly ₹5.21 crore for the property.
Investigators from the Enforcement Directorate found that those linked to the matter had built a web of 46 registered companies operating under the Panoramic Group umbrella. Under the banner of "Sale of Room Nights" and timeshare holiday memberships, affiliated entities within the group are alleged to have run schemes that drew in upwards of 51 lakh participants from across the country, the agency stated.
According to the Enforcement Directorate, money moved through a network of shell entities — among them Shagun Tradelinks Pvt — via a structured layering process. Those funds were then channelled into Panoramic Universal Limited, along with its domestic and overseas subsidiaries, and are alleged to have been directed toward the purchase of high-value real estate holdings, resort properties, and commercial assets.
According to a press release issued in May 2025, the Enforcement Directorate had placed provisional attachment orders on 30 foreign assets — 22 of them located in Thailand, six in the UAE, and two in the USA — with a combined estimated worth of around ₹54.32 crore. Investigators determined that roughly ₹99 crore had been channelled out of Pancard Clubs and into Panoramic Universal Limited, with further sums reportedly routed into the personal accounts of relatives belonging to Sudhir Moravekar, the now-deceased accused in the matter.
Filings by the Enforcement Directorate indicated that a hotel property in New Zealand, brought under ownership through a foreign direct investment transaction dating to around 2002, was subsequently disposed of and the associated New Zealand subsidiary wound down — neither action having been notified to the Reserve Bank or the relevant banking institution as required by applicable regulations. Remittances tied to overseas direct investment — channelled into the United States, the UAE, Thailand, and Singapore — totalled around ₹100 crore across the twelve-year stretch from 2002 through 2014, according to the agency's findings.
According to a filing attributed to the ED dated October 2026, a plot of land spanning 7.08 hectares in Village Kalhe, Panvel, Raigad, changed hands while attachment orders placed by both SEBI and the MPID Competent Authority were already in effect against it. According to the agency's complaint, the deal involved a Board Resolution bearing what appeared to be the signature of Usha Arun Tari — a director whose death had been recorded on 11 September 2018 — and the document was presented as having been executed on behalf of a company that had already been removed from the register.
Under Section 5(1) of the PMLA, the ED indicated that further transfers or alienation of the property had been brought to a halt through the provision's application.
A first information report lodged at Dadar Police Station in Mumbai set the probe in motion, with the Economic Offences Wing of Mumbai Police later assuming charge of that case before the Enforcement Directorate opened its own inquiry into the matter. On 31 December 2021, a chargesheet lodged by the EOW before Mumbai's Special MPID Court named Pancard Clubs Limited, Panoramic Universal Limited, and 44 associated entities among the accused, with six directors and five marketing representatives also brought within the scope of the filing.
A formal insolvency resolution process under corporate law was set in motion by the NCLT when it accepted the filing on 9 September 2022. Documentation held by the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Board of India captures a resolution plan that received formal approval on 25 April 2024. Insolvency filings placed on the public record show admitted claims totalling around ₹8,933.92 crore set against three separate valuation benchmarks: a liquidation figure of roughly ₹346.51 crore, a fair-value assessment of approximately ₹459.66 crore, and a realisable amount put at around ₹697.32 crore.
A resolution plan put forward by Chemhub Tradelink Private Limited received tribunal clearance from the NCLT on 25 April 2024. SEBI chose not to pursue Civil Appeals Nos. 408-409/2025 before the Supreme Court, and those appeals were closed out on that basis during January 2025. Civil Appeal No. 558/2026, through which SEBI contested an NCLAT ruling on a recall application, came before the Supreme Court during May 2026 and was turned away without relief. Those hearings did not constitute the Supreme Court revisiting the Pancard Clubs regulatory dispute on its merits from the ground up.
Figures from SEBI's prior case record put the total number of affected investors at 51,55,516, with funds drawn in reaching ₹7,035 crore. Inquiries by the ED are continuing, with no conclusion yet reached.
