ED sends notice to Angelique International for suspected FEMA violations

The Enforcement Directorate has served a show-cause notice to Angelique International Limited for the transfer of funds to certain African countries allegedly in violation of the Foreign Exchange Management Act (FEMA).

The alleged violation involved “improper” payments to the tune of 1.06 crore dollars and 70.90 crore in African currencies to certain individuals, according to the agency.

“Investigations have revealed that the funds were sent to the African countries for certain extraneous payments, in the guise of business expenses,” said an ED official.

The ED probe found that the company had made the payments on account of its overseas projects by “padding up” the project cost and disguising the same as “business development charges”, “site survey”, “consultancy” and other pretexts.

“These projects were financed by the Indian government under the Line of Credit and also by multilateral funding agencies like the World Bank,” said the official.

Based on the findings, the agency said, the notice was issued to the company, its managing director Ajay Krishna Goyal and its joint president and whole-time director M.P. Gupta.

Foreign currency seized

Last year, the ED had issued notice to Mr. Gupta following purported seizure of 53,678 dollars, 13,103 Euros and 640 pounds from his residence.

The ED had launched investigations based on intelligence inputs about misuse of the government’s Line of Credit facility by certain companies. “Preliminary enquiries confirmed that Angelique International Limited had sent large-scale money abroad under banking transactions in violation of FEMA,” said an ED statement.

In January last year, the ED conducted searches on the premises of the company and its key functionaries. “It led to seizure of cash in Indian currency, foreign currency, incriminating documents and electronic evidence such as hard discs, laptops, pen drives and mobile phones,” the official said.