CHENNAI: Five years after the Enforcement Directorate (ED) began investigating an international Trade Based Money Laundering (TBML) scam orchestrated from Chennai, the recovery of a hard disc from a house in north Chennai in 2021 led to the discovery that the foreign bank accounts receiving the laundered money were being operated from the city.
In September 2024, the owner of the house, Abdul Haleem, became the seventh person convicted in the scam by a special Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) court in Chennai. This was the sixth conviction in the investigations where at least Rs 120 crore in US Dollars was found to have been laundered to Hong Kong since 2016 through bank accounts of multiple shell companies in Chennai as payments for faked import of electronics. The accounts in Indian Bank and Syndicate bank had been created using forged documents by hawala operators and impersonators acting as agents for the handlers of the scam.
In 2021, ED zeroed in on Haleem based on confessions of two other accused, who identified him as the operator of some of the bank accounts used for laundering. A hard disk and some important documents were seized by ED during the searches at his Mannady house and office.
The disk had details of the pins and passwords of bank accounts of Hong Kong-based companies like Flourish Noble and Decent Mount in HSBC bank. These were the accounts that had received the proceeds of crime from the under-investigation Chennai accounts.
These international accounts were in the name of one Ruknuthjaman, a resident of Kodambakkam in Chennai. ED found digital copies of Ruknuthjaman’s passport, photograph and other personal details in the disk. In addition, there were also communications in his name sent to HSBC bank requesting transfer of funds between the accounts.
Among the physical documents seized by ED from Ameen’s house were blank pages under the letterhead of Flourish Noble.
This led the ED to deduce that Haleem was operating the international bank accounts. In effect, ED’s investigation proved that crores of rupees of illicit money was laundered from India to Hong Kong by the accused sitting in Chennai. The same modus operandi, i.e. use of impersonators, was employed to open both Indian and foreign bank accounts.
During interrogation, Haleem pointed fingers at one Ameen of Burma Bazaar as his handler; however, ED could not trace any such person, eventually stalling their bid to find the ultimate beneficiaries of this laundering exercise.
Indicating that the probe in this case is not yet over, sources said ED has sent Letters Rogatory (LRs) to Hong Kong in a bid to gather evidence regarding the ultimate beneficiaries of this laundering exercise.
Sources also admitted that investigations so far had only scraped the tip of the iceberg as more than Rs 3,500 crore was alleged to have been remitted to Hong Kong from accounts in just two of Chennai’s banks.