The Enforcement Directorate (ED) on Tuesday conducted searches at 44 places across the country in an alleged money laundering probe against Chinese smartphone manufacturing company Vivo and its related firms, sources in the agency said.

The searches were carried out under sections of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) in several states, including Delhi, Uttar Pradesh, Meghalaya and Maharashtra.

“Recently we filed a money laundering case after taking cognisance of a Delhi Police (economic offences wing) FIR against a distributor of the agency based in Jammu and Kashmir where it was alleged that a few Chinese shareholders in that company forged their identity documents,” said an ED official.

The ED suspects this alleged forgery was done to launder illegally generated funds using shell or paper companies and some of these “proceeds of crime” were diverted abroad or put in some other businesses by skirting Indian tax and enforcement agencies.

Government sources said the ED raid is part of the Centre’s crackdown against Chinese entities and their linked Indian operatives indulging in serious financial crimes such as money laundering and tax evasion while operating from India.

Following border tensions between the two nations and the clash at the Galwan Valley that killed 20 Indian soldiers, the surveillance of Chinese companies became intense.

The government had banned several Chinese mobile applications, includingTikTok.

In May this year, China had said it remains India’s largest trading partner to counter figures published by New Delhi, which said India did more trade with the US than any other country last year.