Money Laundering: ED conducts raids in Srinagar

SRINAGAR — The Enforcement Directorate (ED) on Tuesday conducted searches at 44 places across the country including the summer capital Srinagar in a money-laundering investigation against Chinese smartphone manufacturing company Vivo and related firms, officials said.

According to news agency Kashmir Dot Com, searches were conducted by the Central probing agency in the under-construction residential house of Dr Mohammad Iqbal Mir son of Habibullah Mir, a resident of Madin Sahib Hawal of Lal-Bazar area, presently residing at Rajbagh. Iqbal Mir (BUMS Degree holder) has a dealership of Vivo phones.

Another team along with local police conducted searches in the house of Basharat Khan son of Zareef Din Khan, a resident of Balgarden. After searching, the same team raided his shop namely Micromax Shop near City Plaza in Karan Nagar. Khan is said to be the distributor of Chinese mobiles in Kashmir.

During the searches on Tuesday, various incriminating documents were seized from the premises of the ‘suspects’, sources said, adding that further investigation of the case is going on.

The Central agency filed a money laundering case after taking cognisance of a recent Delhi Police (economic offences wing) FIR against a distributor of the agency based in Jammu and Kashmir where it was alleged that a few Chinese shareholders in that company forged their identity documents.

The ED suspects this alleged forgery was done to launder illegally generated funds using shell or paper companies and some of these “proceeds of crime” were diverted abroad or put in some other businesses by skirting Indian tax and enforcement agencies.