Hawala kingpin arrested by ED

NEW DELHI: The Enforcement Directorate (ED) on Wednesday arrested Naresh Kumar Jain, an underworld money mover wanted in at least six countries including the US, the UK, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands, and the UAE, for allegedly facilitating illegal transfers worth over ₹1 lakh crore over the past fivesix years for several businessmen, drug mafia and other criminal networks, people familiar with the development said.

The agency has identified more than 942 bank accounts and 554 shell companies used by Jain for moving the money illegally. It has also traced at least 337 foreign bank accounts, largely based in Hong Kong, Dubai and Singapore where huge transfers have been made over the years.

As of now, the ED has recovered documents pertaining to 970 beneficiaries in India including some top corporate honchos who used Jain’s network for laundering their dirty money worth around ₹18,000 crore apart from a forex trading firm whose executives have already been summoned by the agency.

During searches at his two premises in Rohini and Vikaspuri in Delhi in 2018, the agency recovered documents pertaining to ₹96,000 crore and ₹11,800 crore worth hawala transactions, respectively, which were being analysed for the past few years. The ED had also recovered digital keys for several foreign accounts from Jain’s premises which suggested that his network was vast, said one of the officials cited above.

“He is probably one of the biggest hawala dealers in the world having links in Europe, the US, Africa, the Middle East, India and Pakistan,” said an officer.

The 61-year old Naresh Kumar Jain, a native of Panipat, had first fled India in 1995 and remained in Dubai till May 2009. He started a company – M/s Kumar Trading CO in Dubai and started trading in commodities.