I-T dept unearths ₹20,000-cr hawala racket
The income-tax (I-T) department on Monday claimed to have busted a nexus of hawala operators who were running a money laundering racket in the national capital estimated to be worth ₹20,000 crore.
Official aware of the matter in the department said a “series of” raids and surveys were conducted by sleuths of the Delhi investigation unit of the I-T department over the last few weeks in different business areas of old Delhi.
These operations led to unearthing of illegal financial activities by three groups of operators, a senior official said.
A survey was conducted on one such group in the Naya Bazar area, that led to the detection of bogus billing of about ₹18,000 crore. This group had floated a dozen bogus entities for providing fake bills, the official said. The identities of the accused were not disclosed by the department.
In the second case, a “highly organised” money laundering racket has been unearthed where current transactions in well-known shares were fraudulently camouflaged as being sales of old shares held for years, the official said.
He said this way, the beneficiaries have been found claiming “bogus long-term capital gains.” The taxman suspects the magnitude of this purported scam to be over ₹1,000 crore. “This figure appears to be the tip of the ice berg. This modus operandi has been found to be going on for many years,” the official said.