New Delhi
Hawala, India’s age-old practice of cash transfers through illegal channels, has acquired new hues as many have started parking sleaze cash with sex workers. The process apparently is full-proof and very simple.
Such sex workers, claim officials of the Enforcement Directorate (ED), operate all over Europe, and in parts of Africa and also in Singapore, Thailand and Malaysia. The cash is parked with them as fees for professional services, ranging from escort services to official assistance.
The ED, it is reliably learnt, has been tracking such illegal cash transfers for over two years and zeroed in on many cases with conclusive, concrete evidence of the cash trail from India to those aforesaid nations. The cash, claim ED officials, has been parked by these sex workers in their accounts and claimed they were paid by clients from India for professional services.
But where these dubious characters lost the plot was when the ED investigated their international travels and found they hardly visited the countries where they had parked their cash. “This is a new trend that has started among Indians who have sleaze cash and want to park it out of the country, as evident in many cases across the country,” says former NSG cop Dipanjan Chakraborty, now a senior internal security analyst based out of Mumbai.
Chakraborty told this reporter that some influential people in an Opposition-ruled state have been found to be using the services of these women, parking large amounts of cash in accounts abroad.
“The ED has definite proof that this sleaze cash is earnings from illegal coal sales, cow smuggling, sand smuggling and cash earned from gullible people aspiring for teachers’ jobs in government-owned schools in the state,” Chakraborty further said. “The ED has relevant documents tracing such cash in their custody and investigations are reaching their logical conclusion. The noose is being tightened,” added Chakraborty.
ED officials claim that from 2018 to 2020, an influential political leader, a top accountant and one of the accused in the coal smuggling case and fugitive Vinay Mishra, made frequent trips to Dubai, London and the United States, allegedly to meet a sex worker, a Russia-born woman. This woman, who is based out of London and frequently travels to Dubai and the US, introduced these people to some of her associates operating out of Dubai and London.
So, what is the catch here? ED officials say they have evidence that Mishra, on behalf of influential leaders of a regional party that is among the prominent members of the I.N.D.I.A. coalition, interacted with these sex workers and started sending sleaze cash to their accounts. Slowly, many started parking their cash abroad with these sex workers.
ED’s success in probing the coal, cattle and teachers’ scam along with the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) stems from confessions made by some of those arrested in these cases. Another breakthrough, claim ED officials, which will help the investigating agency is the case of Vinay Mishra, a proclaimed offender.
Mishra, who had escaped to Vanuatu—an island nation located in the South Pacific Ocean and at the centre of strategic rivalry between China and western countries in the Pacific islands—to avoid extradition to India, could be brought back. And it will happen because New Delhi will soon sign an extradition treaty with Vanuatu. The process started after Prime Minister Narendra Modi met Vanuatu Prime Minister Alatoi Kalasaku on the sidelines of the FIPIC Summit in May 2023.
The latest development, claimed Chakraborty, has set the proverbial cat among pigeons. “Mishra’s confessions could mess up many lives. People who laundered crores of cash could be in serious trouble.”
Mishra, who was living in Vanuatu with a different identity, had taken up the citizenship of Vanuatu. But he is in serious trouble, ostensibly because the Calcutta High Court, while deciding on Mishra’s petition, refused to quash the CBI’s proceedings against him. In view of the High Court judgement, the CBI is now free to approach the Vanuatu government and seek his extradition.
The cat is almost out of the bag. ED and CBI officials say several influential personalities in the I.N.D.I.A. regional party’s state had taken the help of “trusted girlfriends” to hide or dispose of illegal money.
According to the statement of Anup Manjhi alias Lala, the main accused of coal smuggling, black money transactions of more than Rs 2,000 crore have taken place. Out of that, about one and a half thousand crore rupees went to some influential people.
ED officials claim that besides parking sleaze cash with sex workers, hundreds of crores of black money of coal smuggling have been deposited in various bank accounts, construction and hotel business in this country, as well as hotel business in Hong Kong, Singapore and Thailand.