A school teacher and a middleman have been arrested by the Enforcement Directorate (ED). The duo purportedly duped a person on the pretext of bailing him out in a money laundering probe linked to a Chinese-linked mobile phone loan app fraud, the agency said on Monday, February 27.
On February 25, the federal investigative agency took Jeetandra Prasad and Dinesh Singh Kushwaha into custody. And a court in Delhi later sent them to ED custody till March 3 and March 2, respectively. In this context, the ED, in a statement, said Prasad was a "middleman" and Kushwaha worked as a Hindi teacher in a Delhi government school, as stated in a report by PTI.
Further, the agency in a statement, said, "These persons had taken Rs 2.6 crore from an accused named Vaibhav Dipak Shah in the Powerbank app case, through the hawala channel on the pretext of getting his work done from ED." Additionally, first, the ED filed a complaint with the Special Cell of the Delhi Police and later filed its own case under the criminal sections of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) against the two.
Giving more details, it said, "The Enforcement Directorate took serious note of the incident and conducted searches at the premises of the two persons and later arrested them in the matter after finding them involved in dealing with proceeds of crime."
Moreover, the raids resulted in the recovery of Rs 47.5 lakh cash, forged summons/notices, duplicate official stamps and digital data pertaining to huge cash transactions from the residence of Prasad, the ED said. The investigation into siphoning off more than Rs 250 crore public money by a Chinese national in the Powerbank app case is ongoing, it said, as stated in a report by PTI.
