Deputy Commissioner of Police (Law and Order, North Zone) Navin Gulati said on Saturday the inquiries by the Income Tax Department and the preliminary investigation by the City Police had revealed that prime accused in the hawala case Vaddi Mahesh had opened many proprietary concerns/partnership firms in the names of his employees to facilitate transfer of funds.
Giving details to the media here, the DCP said Mahesh with the help of his father Srinivasa Rao (A 2) and seven others had opened 12 bogus companies in Visakhapatnam, Kolkata and other places and opened 30 bank accounts in the names of the fictitious companies. The analysis of the accounts indicated an inward domestic remittance of ₹680.94 crore. Of this, ₹569.93 crore was remitted to five companies in China, Singapore and Hong Kong fraudulently towards purchase of customised software with the help of forged documents. But no software was imported thus cheating the government of foreign exchange, he said.
Mr. Gulati said the accused had violated the provisions of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act. Cases were booked against the accused under Sections 420, 120 (b), 465, 468 and 471 read with 34 IPC at the Muvvalavanipalem police station.
The other seven accused are: Achanta Harish (A3), Achanta Rajesh (A4), Prasanta Kumar Roy Barman (A5), Praveen Kumar Jha (A6), Ayush Goel (A7), Vineet Goenka (A8) and Vikas Gupta(A9).
He said the investigation had revealed that the A1 to A4 were natives of the West Godavari district though initially they had claimed to be from the Srikakulam district. The A5 and A6 were Chartered Accountants based in Kolkata.
At present bankers were being seen only as ‘victims’ and only further investigation could reveal whether they had colluded with the accused. The accused were involved in cheating, forgery, submission of forged documents and conspiracy.
To another query, he said the case could be transferred to the CID or the CBI. It was only on May 11 that we had received a complaint from the IT Department and the case was under investigation, he added.
Family left for Kolkata
Srikakulam Staff Reporter writes
The Srikakulam police administration has been trying for the last two days to identify the antecedents of Vaddi Mahesh. According to sources, the DGP and the DIG office-Visakhapatnam alerted the district officials including J. Brahama Reddy, SP, about the scam. the department HAD FOUND that Mahesh and his family had left for Kolkata many years ago and they did not have any direct contacts with locals.
“We alerted the Circle Inspectors of all the important stations to collect information about Mr. Vaddi Mahesh. We may collect more info within a couple of days,” said a senior official.
Meanwhile, the issue has caught the attention of political leaders and business personalities of the district. A majority of them said they had never heard of him. They also felt that no one in Srikakulam was involved in the Hawala transactions. “A majority of the business persons won’t involve in such things. Moreover, the transactions may not cross even ₹10 crore per day. So, there is no need to join hands with such criminals,” said a business person.
