Visakhapatnam: Rs 800 crore from single account went abroad

Visakhapatnam: The Vizag money laundering case has taken a new turn with officials from the Income Tax Department uncovering evidence of over Rs 800 crore being funnelled out of the country from a single account in a public sector bank located in Kolkata, in 2016. IT officials and the police suspect the involvement of bankers, as records indicate that Rs 90 crore was deposited to the account, in cash, on a single day.

Preliminary investigations have revealed that few businessmen in north India supplied money for the scam. The city police produced the main accused, Vaddi Mahesh, before the court on Monday.

City police chief T. Yoganand spoke to reporters and said that the case had been handed over to the CID for further investigation, as the city police did not have an economic offence wing or personnel trained to handle such a big case. Based on the amount of money and the number of foreign transactions involved, investigation of the case will require coordination with investigative agencies abroad, including the CBI, ED and Interpol.

The city police have arrested Mahesh, and have launched a manhunt for eight others named in the FIR, based on the IT Department’s report. The scam was unearthed by the IT Department led by M.V.N. Seshu Bhavanarayana, the Income Tax Joint Director (Investi-gations). Two months into the preliminary enquiry, the Department named Vaddi Mahesh, his father Vaddi Srinivasa Rao, his cousins Achanta Harish and Achanta Rajesh, and five others as the accused.

The Police Commissioner said that Harish and Rajesh had been questioned, and the hunt was on for Srinivasa Rao and five others. “During our interrogation Mahesh claimed that they were under-invoicing imported alcohol, cigarettes, and rice-cookers, to evade custom duty. However, IT officials have dismissed Mahesh’s claims,” he said.

Mahesh and his team opened 12 fake companies, and operated 30 fictitious accounts, through which they laundered about Rs 1,600 crore. They fraudulently remitted amounts to five foreign companies – three in Singapore, and one each in China and Hong Kong towards the purchase of customised software, using forged documents. A senior police officer suspects that the people who deposited crores of rupees must have fled the country.