NEW DELHI: The customs department has unearthed a hawala racket at the Inland Container Depot in Tughlakabad, and detected illegal forex transfers of over Rs 22 billion. Customs officials disclosed that 20 firms based in Delhi and Ludhiana, operating 26 bank accounts in the capital, regularly shifted money from hawala dealers in Chandni Chowk and Gaffar Market to Hong Kong and China under the guise of payments for imports
A routine request by a bank to customs to verify the genuineness of a ‘high sea sales’, or sale of goodswhile still in transport, of one of these companies led to the unravelling of the illegal money transactions, said officials on Tuesday.
According to customs officials, several shell companies were found to have used forged PAN/Aadhar cards to open bank accounts and used them to transmit as much as Rs 5 million per transaction in foreign currency to foreign destinations by submitting forged bills of entry (BE) for non-existent imports. A BE is a document filed by importers with the customs for clearance of goods imported by them. It contains information about the port of import, the names and addresses of the foreign supplier and of the importer, and the invoice value of imports.
“The importer submits a customs certified hard copy of a BE to a bank, which then remits the requisite amount of foreign exchange on behalf of the importer to the bank account of the foreign supplier, explained Nilank Kumar, joint commissioner of customs (Special Intelligence and Investigations Branch), ICD, Tughlakabad.
Officials said customs had received references from several banks to verify the authenticity of some BEs. “During one such verification, sleuths of the Special Intelligence and Investigation Branch, under the overall guidance of Ananya Ray, special secretary of the Central Board of Excise and Customs, found that Neelkanth Enterprises based in Mayapuri Industrial Area had purchased goods on ‘high sea sales’ basis from a well-known Japanese MNC,” said Kumar. “The fact that the MNC, itself a major importer, had conducted a high sea sales with an unknown entity aroused our suspicions.”
Further scrutiny showed Neelkanth Enterprises itself claiming to have made another suspicious high sea sale with an equally unfamiliar firm, Sandhar Technologies Ltd of Khel Gaon Marg, New Delhi.
