The Enforcement Directorate is likely to seek details from the directorate of revenue intelligence (DRI) in its probe related to illegal remittances sent abroad worth several crore against non existent imports.
Sources said, “The ED may seek assistance from the DRI as the latter had earlier probed irregularities pertaining to trade-related money laundering instances involving Oriental Bank of Commerce”. The ED on October 15 filed a fresh FIR in connection with this case registered under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act. The ED also arrested Manish Jain, operating a forex firm in Ghaziabad, Uttar Pradesh, for allegedly depositing and remitting Rs 505 crore between 2006 and 2010 from the Rajpur branch of OBC in an illegal manner against imports that never took place.
The ED also arrested a Ghaziabad-based foreign exchange operator for sending these illegal remittances to these foreign locations. Preliminary investigations have revealed that foreign exchange to the tune of Rs 557 crore (approx) has been sent out of India from the 11 bogus firms under garb of imports, sources said. The case was unearthed after the agency got leads from an accused in the Bank of Baroda money laundering case, where suspicious remittances of an estimated Rs 6,000 crore came to light recently and which is being probed by multiple agencies including CBI, SFIO, Income Tax department and the ED. “The ED agency is also preparing to examine senior officials of the OBC in connection with the case. If required the OBC officials may be examined infront of Manish Jain”, sources said.
These remittances made through 66 accounts in the said OBC branch, the ED said, were subsequently sent to an HSBC bank branch in Hong Kong and then to China in return for settling dues of various importers in India with Chinese suppliers.
On the agency’s trade-related laundering radar, where accused traders evade customs duties and taxes to generate slush funds, are seven other banks in the national capital region like ING Vysya, ICICI, Kotak Mahindra, Indusind, Dhanlaxmi bank, YES bank and DCB bank which the agency believes have been misused by Jain and others to perpetrate this fraud.
In the BoB case, the agency had arrested Kamal Kalra, working with the foreign exchange division of HDFC bank, Chandan Bhatia, Gurucharan Singh Dhawan and Sanjay Aggarwal.
