Documents accessed by dna show that many genuine and fake identities were used by the culprits to transfer Rs 6,000 crore from Bank of Baroda in Delhi to Hong Kong.
The Central Bureau of Investigation and Enforcement Directorate have arrested six persons in connection to the illegal remittance of over Rs 6000 crore from Bank of Baroda to various companies in Hong Kong and Dubai. As their questioning goes on, the agencies are likely to gather more clues to determine who exactly the money belonged to.
Documents accessed by dna show that the transfer of over Rs 6,000 crore to Hong Kong through a single Delhi-based branch of Bank of Baroda has benami actors not just in India, but spread across the globe. The web of money spins from the bylanes of Nangloi in West Delhi to South Korean passport holders operating out of Mexico City to Nepalese citizens and residents of Hong Kong itself.
Among other companies named in the Bank of Baroda audit, two have owners whose city of residence is India’s capital – New Delhi. One of them is Mega Forwarders and Traders Ltd – which has its office at Des Voux Road West, Sheung Wan, Hong Kong. But guess what? Its owners are two obscure men in two localities of Delhi. One of them is a fake identity with a false address, yet they managed to open a company in Hong Kong and received millions of dollars through a single branch of Bank of Baroda in Delhi.
One of the men shown as owner of the company is a man named Abbas Mehdi. He is shown as a resident of Mayur Vihar Phase – 1 in Delhi, a locality more famous for its concentration of journalists than anyone else. Mehdi’s house is located in a middle class locality of run down double storey apartments. dna visited his house and the bell was answered by a woman who did not reveal her name. Before ringing the door bell, dna asked around the neighbourhood for a man named Abbas Mehdi. All of them pointed out to the same address. dna is not publishing his address for preserving the dignity of his family. When asked about Abbas Mehdi, the woman panicked and refused to say he lived there, before finally admitting that a man of the same name stays there.
It is unclear how a man of modest means living with his three brothers in a three-room house could invest $HK 10,000 in Mega Forwarders and Traders to become its owner and then receive millions of dollars. CBI officers have earlier pointed out that most people in the Rs 6,000 crore scam were benamis – or fake fronts for the real culprits to whom the money belonged.
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The bigger partner to Mehdi is a man named Sunil Chaudhary whose address in the documents is mentioned in the locality of Ganesh Nagar in the national capital. Not only does the address given in the documents not exist, but even the man himself, Sunil Chaudhary seems to be a figment of someone’s imagination. Despite the glaring lack of identity and residential proof, the Hong Kong administration allowed the company to be incorporated in its territory. Mega Forwarders and Traders was one of the firms that had allegedly received millions of dollars from India to export rice and cashew. Neither did any tangible trade take place nor were any invoices that proved the transaction generated. Bank of Baroda has pointed out that money sent to these companies was sent by manipulating the exchange rate between the Indian rupee and the US Dollar by conniving bank officials.
It is not just people in Delhi who were used as fake fronts or benamis by the people who sent the money to Hong Kong and Dubai. Millions of dollars were remitted to another company by the name of Jasco Ltd through the Bank of Baroda branch. This company was opened by a man named Kim Jun Hyung, a South Korean passport holder and a resident of Mexico City. Hyung opened this company in 2008 but transferred it to two other people in November 2014. This was barely a few months after the high value monetary transactions started taking place from India to this company. In January, 2015 a Hong Kong resident named Sze Ling Yu took over the company. Jasco Ltd had no business activity to show in its books to have merited such huge remittances from India.
The scam unearthed by Bank of Baroda in its internal audit seem to have benamis spread out across the globe – many of them genuine and others completely fictitious. The Enforcement Directorate (ED) meanwhile has also arrested four bank employees and is interrogating them. The ED believes it is “not a case of black money but trade based money laundering” that involved inflated export bills and fictitious imports.
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