The Enforcement Directorate has taken into custody two Delhi-based businessmen, both brothers, for allegedly sending illegally foreign remittances worth more than ₹4,800 crore to Hong Kong and China.
A local court sent Mayank Dang and Tushar Dang to the custody of the agency until Thursday following their arrest on November 25 under the provisions of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act. The arrests so far in the case have increased to four, as earlier, Manideep Mago and Sanjay Sethi were also picked up.
According to the ED, the Dang brothers had a “well-organised” syndicate spread across a large pool of Indian importers and traders, cash handlers, international hawala agents, local ‘Angandiya’ firms, numerous Chinese manufacturers and suppliers, and a “dedicated” chain of warehouses in several Chinese cities.
This ecosystem was allegedly meant for the “illegal” sending of foreign remittances worth Rs 4,817 crore against “bogus” and “forged” invoices to make compensatory payments for under-invoiced imports from China and Hong Kong.
The Dang family’s modus operandi was to operate and control several foreign entities in “collusion and collaboration” with a key Chinese member of the syndicate known as “Mr King.”
As per the ED, Mr King procured goods from Chinese manufacturers and suppliers and accumulated them in warehouses before exporting them to the firms “controlled and owned” by the Dang family.
Mayank and Tushar would import “highly” under-invoiced goods, and the compensatory payments were remitted abroad through Mago and Sethi, the ED alleged.
The remittances by Mago and Sethi were made against “bogus” invoices raised for the online lease of servers for crypto mining, education software, lease of bare metal servers etc, it said.
The probe found that no such services were actually provided. The remittances were made to foreign companies controlled by Mago and his accomplices, and, from here, the payments were made to Chinese companies engaged in exporting various products to India, the ED claimed.