On 2G money trail, CBI grills suspected hawala dealer

The CBI on Monday questioned Delhi-based businessman Mahesh Jain in a bid to unravel the hawala dimension in the second generation mobile telephony spectrum allocation scam . The residence and offices of Jain were raided by the agency earlier this month.

The queries revolved around documents and a notebook recovered from former telecom minister A Raja’s house. These carry references to some hawala transactions. Several documents recovered during simultaneous raids on JG Group, owned by Mahesh Jain, provide details of the 2G money trail.

“We suspect JG Group and its companies were used to park the 2G kickback money, which was later rerouted through Mauritius and Cyprus to other destinations,” said a source.
The agency’s sleuths believe that the JG Group is actually a facade and the Jains were conducting big-time hawala transactions under its banner. 

Sources say Jain began as a small-time hawala operator some 20 years ago and jumped to the big league after Raja became the Union minister for environment in UPA-I in 2004.

Sources said documents recovered during the raids contain details of hawala transactions and money paid to some political figures and scribes in Tamil Nadu. The CBI, though, remains tight-lipped about it.

Meanwhile, the agency is likely to book some people under the Official Secrets Act. It is also planning to dispatch letters rogatory to at least three countries, including Singapore, Malaysia and the UAE, to trace the second generation mobile telephony spectrum allocation scam money.