By Raju Vernekar
New Delhi/Mumbai, August 12:
The officers of Income Tax department raided a total of 21 companies based in Delhi, Ghaziabad and Gurugram region and unearthed a Rs 1000 crore money laundering scam by Chinese firms in India, on Tuesday.
The raids were conducted based on the credible information that few Chinese individuals and their Indian associates were involved in money laundering and hawala transactions through series of shell entities. The income tax search action was mounted at various premises of these Chinese entities, their close confederates and couple of bank employees, They were involved in hawala transactions through a series of shell entities, Surabhi Ahluwalia, official spokesperson of CBDT said in a statement.
CBDT further said that the search action revealed that at the behest of Chinese individuals, more than 40 bank accounts were created in various dummy entities, entering into credits of over Rs. 1000 crore over the period. “A subsidiary of Chinese company and its related concerns have taken over Rs. 100 crores bogus advances from shell entities for opening businesses of retail showrooms in India.
Further, incriminating documents in respect of hawala transactions and laundering of money with active involvement of bank employees and Chartered accountants has been found as a result of search action. Evidences of foreign hawala transactions involving Hongkong and US dollars have also been unearthed. Further investigations are under progress, The CBDT said.
During the raid a Chinese individual Charlie Pang holding a fake Indian passport was nabbed by IT sleuths. The passport was reportedly issued from Manipur. Charlie was using 8 to10 bank accounts in fictitious names in India and was representing many Chinese Companies in India for Hawala Operations. The figure can go into thousands of crores, sources said.
There are roughly 800 Chinese companies in the domestic market. They have about 75 manufacturing facilities for smartphones, consumer appliances, construction equipment, power gear, automobiles, optical fibre and chemicals.
There is a sizable Chinese investment in Indian companies. Roughly the investment is: Automobile Industry (40%),Among India’s top 30 unicorns (startups worth over $1 billion), 18 are Chinese funded and technology-driven. Metallurgical Industry (17%), Power (7%), Construction (5%) and services (4%).
India has already banned several Chinese mobile apps in the country for national and data security reasons after mounting global concerns over Chinese government allegedly using these digital platforms for espionage and data harvesting. Government has also taken some policy initiatives including blocking participation of Chinese firms from certain projects and government contracts in the aftermath of Galwan valley clashes between the soldiers of the two countries dealing a blow to bilateral relations and creating a popular atmosphere of mistrust of China in the country.
