|
The Enforcement Directorate (ED) on Monday said that it has arrested Deepak Agarwal and Ayush Goyal for their involvement in a trade-based money laundering scam in which funds to the tune of Rs 1,500 crore were sent outside India in the guise of import of fake "customised software".
An ED official here said that the agency arrested Agarwal on February 22 this year while Goyal on February 27. Both the accused were sent to judicial custody. The official said that a court has granted three day ED custody of Agarwal from March 6 to 9. While the agency has also requested for the custodial interrogation of Goyal from the court. The ED case is based on the basis of FIR registered by Andhra Pradesh Police against Vaddi Mahesh and others,on the complaint of Income Tax. The official said that probe has revealed that Mahesh, in collusion with others had incorporated various shell firms and companies in India and opened bank accounts in the names of these firms or companies. "Mahesh received funds from various persons Pramod Agarwal, Goyal, Vikas Gupta and Vinit Goenka which were deposited by him into the bank accounts of his firms and further transferred to the bank accounts of his shell companies," the official said. He said subsequently, the funds were remitted outside India to various companies in Singapore, Hong Kong and China in the guise of payments for the import of "customized software". The official said that Mahesh had prepared fake invoices purported to have been raised by those overseas companies, in the name of his Indian companies and had arranged fake certificates with the help of Chartered Accountants, who certified that the "customized software" was downloaded in their presence and those certificates were submitted to the banks as proof of import of software. "Deepak Agarwal is the Director of one of the Hong Kong based companies, which had received around Rs 300 crore worth of such foreign remittances," the official said, adding that Goyal had supplied cash to Mahesh and gave instructions about remitting funds outside India. This is the third arrest in this case after the arrest of the main kingpin Bhimender Kumar Goyal who is presently lodged in Tihar Jail. --IANS aks/sdr/ ( 384 Words) 2021-03-09-00:36:23 (IANS)
|
