ED Arrests Chartered Accountant for helping Accused to Launder Rs 1,100 cr from Mumbai to Hong Kong

The Enforcement Directorate (ED) has arrested a chartered accountant (CA) in connection with a case of laundering Rs 1100 crore to Hong Kong, (Special Administrative Region of China) by sending foreign outward remittances from Mumbai through banks, using forged airway bills and fabricated cloud CCTV storage rental charges.

The ED has been conducting a money laundering investigation against a number of Chinese-controlled companies, including Linkyun Technology Private Limited and Dokypay Technology Private Limited, who had cheated lakhs of gullible online users through illegal gaming, dating and streaming applications.

The companies also collected thousands of crore via online payment gateways and then allegedly laundered the money using various modus operandi including hawala payments to hair merchants, purchase of crypto-currency and illegal remittances to Singapore.

“During the course of an ongoing fund trail investigation, ED came across the new modus operandi of using fake airway bills and fake cloud rental bills to send bogus foreign outward remittances from multiple bank accounts. It was disclosed to Hyderabad Police and based on the information of the ED, a new FIR on September 9, 2021 was registered by the police,” said the officials.

Based on this FIR, the ED initiated an investigation and found that CA Ravi Kumar had allegedly issued 621 bogus certificates and signed the balance sheets of shell companies, without doing any due diligence and without verification of genuineness of import documents, which enabled them to launder the proceeds of crime to Hong Kong.

“He failed in his statutory duty and assisted the accused persons and charged Rs 1500 per bogus certificate and thus got involved in the offence of money laundering for personal gain. The proprietors of the shell firms are absconding," officials said.

Ravi Kumar was arrested and produced before the special court in Hyderabad. He has been sent to ED custody till December 9, 2021,” they added.