Mumbai: In the Malegaon money laundering case, two accused – Mustakali Khilji and Amirmiya Shaikh – were engaged in hawala transactions to Dubai and used currency notes as codes.
About The Case
The Enforcement Directorate (ED) has claimed that the two received commissions and were closely linked to the kingpin, Mehmood Bhagad aka Challenger King. Shaikh was allegedly in touch with Bhagad and his manager Jimmy for many years.
The ED has claimed that Khilji and Shaikh were engaged in illegal business of entry transactions, purchase/sale of USDT (crypto-currency) in cash, hawala transactions, and banking transactions from various shell entities.
As per one of the witnesses, the accused had arranged a transfer of Dirham (AED) 2,21,811 to Dubai for an associate, in exchange for Rs 50,26,918 cash collected in India. The witness stated that Shaikh (who was into real estate business) charged as high as Rs 2.5 lakh in commission. Another witness claimed that Shaikh had arranged Rs 20 lakh in AED in Dubai in exchange for Indian currency for associates of the said witness. For this, Shaikh had charged Rs 1.23 lakh.
The ED claimed that Shaikh played a key role by establishing shell companies used for money laundering. After establishing these entities, bank accounts were opened for dummy transactions and later withdrawal of funds. Khilji too was allegedly involved in the establishment of shell companies and nearly Rs 28 crore was withdrawn from these companies in four months.
At the time when ED raided premises of shell companies, Khilji deleted all WhatsApp conversations with the kingpin in a bid to destroy evidence.
