ED unearthed Rs 10,000 crore foreign payment scam, said - money was sent through 98 dummy companies

The Enforcement Directorate (ED) discovered a network of 98 dummy partnership concerns and 12 private companies, during the ongoing investigation in cases of illegal foreign payment. ED reportedly stated that through these, the accused sent Rs 10,000 crore to firms in Hong Kong, Singapore, and Thailand in the name of freight payment.

According to ED, these people used 269 bank accounts for fraud. These accounts were opened in the name of fake companies. The agency had taken its initial action based on an FIR lodged with the Thane Police against Jitendra Pandey and others. These people have carried out this fraud. The Thane police's economic offenses unit arrested Pandey and the other accused. The agency unearthed the scam a week after the ED's Mumbai zonal office raided 11 locations in Mumbai on January 2 in connection with illegal foreign payments under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA), 2002. During the raids, the agency seized about Rs 1 crore in cash and jewelry.

The ED said that during the raids, a network of RTGS entry operators was unearthed who would make RTGS entries in the bank accounts of 98 partner firms by creating a layer of bank accounts of fake companies in such a way that it was not possible to trace where the funds came from in the first place. After this, the money was finally credited to the bank accounts of 12 private limited companies in the name of payments made abroad in the name of transportation costs and logistics.