Cash trouble: New laundering methods

New Delhi: Income tax (I-T) officials on Thursday busted rings involved in money laundering in Mumbai, Nagpur, Ahmedabad and Chennai following the scrapping of high-value banknotes.

Income tax department on Thursday recovered at least Rs 73 crore cash, including Rs 8 crore in the new currency, and 100 kgs of gold bars in searches at multiple locations in Chennai, as per agency reports.

I-T department has called in for additional staff, auditors, counting machines and banking personnel to ascertain the final figures of the recovered assets and formalise the seizure process under tax laws.

I-T teams launched operations in at least five locations of a “syndicate” involved in currency conversion and recovered Rs 8 crore in cash in new currency notes, Rs 65 core cash in old notes and 100 gold bars of 1kg each.

At least three people of the alleged syndicate are being questioned by the taxmen who are still in operations.

I-T officials said that its investigation in Mumbai led to the revelation of a syndicate of ground-level operators active in converting banned currency notes into legal tenders for a commission.

As part of the operation, I-T Investigation Directorate sent out a few decoy customers seeking to exchange banned currency notes into new notes.

The syndicate, acting through its mediator, agreed to the exchange for a 35 per cent commission. The exchange was to take place at the mediator’s residence.

The mediator was caught red handed and new currency notes aggregating to Rs 29.5 lakh was seized, said the department.

I-T department said that it has now emerged that the syndicate comprised of many ground-level operators (GLOs) — mainly local youths led by a master aggregator and a mediator.

The mediator would seek customers. The GLOs would withdraw new currency in their own names or names of friends and family within the prescribed weekly limits, pass it on to the aggregator for a commission and deposit the old notes in their own accounts or accounts of family or friends in small sums.

The department said that another investigation into cash deposits in a bank account in Nagpur revealed that the account holder had no knowledge of the existence of her account where Rs 3.29 crore had been deposited after November 8, 2016.

Enquiries by the department revealed 6 more such accounts in her and parents’ names.

The seven accounts were opened and operated by unknown persons to launder cash of Rs 4.25 crore. Evidence gathered suggest that copies of PAN and other personal documents that she handed over to a friend a few years back were used to fraudulently open these accounts in Kolkata, which were operated to channel suspicious funds to eight beneficiaries, who are now being investigated.

I-T said that in a case at Ahmedabad, discrete intelligence gathered by the I-T investigation team led to a survey of the premises of a transporter in the late hours of December 3, 2016.