It was a tip-off from Australian Federal Police (AFP) in September last year to the Enforcement Directorate (ED) headquarters in Delhi that lead to several searches in Amritsar and Delhi. However, the extent of the racket was not immediately known. After months-long joint investigation with AFP, the dots were connected. By examining the seized documents from India and Australia, the ED sleuths have exposed penetration of Australia-Hong Kong-India-US-UK money laundering network that used proxy companies in Australia, Hong Kong, US and India to launder drug money using legitimate 44 bank accounts in India which were recently freezed by the ED.
The investigation report accessed by The Sunday Standard reveals Tripat Enterprises, SK Trading Pvt Ltd, Ymaxis Pvt Ltd, Billion Trend Forex Pvt Ltd, Professional Forex Services Pvt Ltd (all Australian companies) and AVS Trading Ltd, Billion Trend HK Trading Ltd, Global Associates Ltd, Greatway Traders (all Hong Kong companies) and Raja & Co. Forex Pvt Ltd, based out of India, were used to camouflage the actual nature of the source of the money. This lead to first placement of the funds into the banking system and then layered to integrate the money into the banking system.
