Chinese Hawala racket busted in Delhi-NCR by I-T Dept, over Rs. 1000 Cr seized
12 Aug 2020 08:58:03
The Income Tax Department on Tuesday busted a massive nexus of Chinese companies using the hawala network in India. The IT Dept launched an extensive search operation at 21 locations across Delhi, Gurugram and Ghaziabad following inputs from Intelligence services and nabbed Chinese national who allegedly created several shell firms to carry out money laundering and hawala transactions of over Rs. 1000 Crores.
The Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) said in a statement that during the search action, they found incriminating documents with respect to hawala, with active involvement of bank employees and chartered accountants. Besides, evidence of foreign hawala involving Hong Kong and US dollars was also been unearthed. The investigation has so far revealed that a subsidiary of a Chinese company and its related company took over Rs 100 crore in bogus advances from shell entities for opening business of retail showrooms in India.
The IT Dept. stated that more than 40 bank accounts were created in the name of various dummy entities run by these Chinese firms that over time transacted thousands of crores of rupees. The effort was directed at these entities, their close confederates and also the bank employees who allegedly helped them in laundering money.
Explaining the modus operandi, an official privy to the probe said that a Chinese individual found to be holding a fake Indian passport issued in Manipur was representing many Chinese companies in India for hawala operations.
The Chinese individual detained by the IT Dept. has been identified as Luo Sang. He had assumed identity as Charlie Pang and was using at least 10 bank accounts under fictitious names across the country. Meanwhile, the Official also hinted towards the revelation of more names in the coming weeks.