ED arrests Delhi-based importer brothers in money-laundering case

The ED on Wednesday said it arrested two Delhi-based importer brothers in a money-laundering case linked to alleged illegal foreign remittances worth more than Rs 4,800 crore made to Hong Kong and China.

Mayank Dang and Tushar Dang were taken into custody on November 25 in the national capital under provisions of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act.

A local court has sent them to Enforcement Directorate (ED) custody till Thursday, the agency said. Earlier, Manideep Mago and Sanjay Sethi were arrested as part of this investigation. The case involves "illegal" sending of foreign remittances worth Rs 4,817 crore against "bogus" and "forged" invoices for making compensatory payments for under-invoiced imports made from China and Hong Kong.

The Dang brothers, the agency said, made a "well organised" syndicate comprising a big 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.

The Dang family also operated and controlled several foreign entities in "collusion and collaboration" with a key Chinese member of the syndicate known as "Mr King" who, after procuring goods from Chinese manufacturers and suppliers and accumulating the same in warehouses, exported them to the firms "controlled and owned" by the family.

The goods imported by the Dang brothers were "highly" under-invoiced 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 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 and 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 export of various products to India, the ED claimed.