Bengal: ED investigating bank accounts of Bangladeshi citizens arrested in Hawala scam

Kolkata : Enforcement Directorate (ED) in West Bengal is investigating the bank accounts of Ronny Mondal and Sameer Chowdhary, the two Bangladeshi nationals arrested by the central agency in the Hawala case.

The bank accounts held by Mondal’s sister, brother-in-law and nephew, who are residing at Barrackpore in North 24 Paragans district, are also being investigated by the ED officials.

Sources said that the investigating officials believe that Mondal has high-level influential political contacts by which was able to get a trade license from local Barrackpore Municipality to do contract works for the same urban civic body despite being a Bangladeshi national.

The investigating officials also believe that Mondal was present in different public meetings of the ruling Trinamool Congress in the area.

Sources said that the investigation of their bank accounts will help the officials to have a clear idea about the money trail that will in due course identify the influential links.

Besides Mondal and Chowdhary, the ED officials also arrested two citizens namely Pintu Halder and Pinki Basu earlier this week in connection with the hawala scam.

On Tuesday, the ED officials, accompanied by the central armed police forces (CAPF) personnel conducted raids and search operations at 12 locations in West Bengal in connection to the hawala scam stretched over West Bengal and Jharkhand and having links with Bangladesh. The 12 places included the residence of a woman at Madhyamgram in North 24 Parganas district against whom a case was registered at Ranchi.

The concerned woman got other women from neighbouring Bangladesh to illegally immigrate to West Bengal after luring them with promises of employment and then got them involved in the inter-state hawala racket, mainly involving West Bengal and Jharkhand.

These Bangladeshi women were also provided with fake documents like Aadhaar cards with Hindu names. A couple of those Bangladeshi women, sources added, managed to escape to Ranchi and filed a complaint at a local police station there.

Since “hawala trading” comes under the purview of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA), the ED suo motu took up the matter after filing an Enforcement Case Information Report (ECIR).

Preliminary investigation has revealed that a portion of the money routed through the hawala passage was also invested in the transport business.