An idea that worked, but…
KANPUR: Local businessman Anand Khatri hit upon the idea of helping people convert their old (and value-less) currency, which they had presumably not been able to exchange because it was not declared, and recruited a clerk at DAV College, Santosh Kumar, to help him.
The duo contacted brokers Koteshwar Rao, Ali Hussain, Rajeshwari Ranga Rao, Manish Agarwal and Sanjeev Agarwal from Kolkata and Hyderabad who agreed to get the money converted. They had agreed to pay ₹25 on every ₹100 converted and a 10% commission for Khatri.
“As the word spread , many people from Varanasi and Mirzapur collected money from businessmen and gave it to Khatri,” said a person familiar with the investigation who asked not to be named.
The tipping point in the investigation seems to have been the arrest of the Meerut property dealer. He led the team to the middlemen in Hyderabad.
The police believe that NRIs may have been used to facilitate the exchange. According to Kanpur zone IG Alok Singh, Rao, one of the arrested has named a Hyderabad based company which has many employees, many of them NRIs, posted overseas.
MODUS OPERANDI
Koteshwar Rao of Hyderabad was in touch with a business conglomerate, which has sizeable population of its employees settled overseas as NRI. Their NRI status was being used to launder money. Singh said they have named a company but it was not verified. “We will look into what they are telling us.” Another laundering route they disclosed was offshore companies, which had disclosed to government that they had certain amount in demonetised currency but hadn’t deposited the sum yet. Such companies were in touch of this group, which was supplying the sum to these companies to launder against a certain commission. “We are verifying; it will take some time to come up with a clear picture .”