The Enforcement Directorate (ED) has examined about 150 bank accounts linked to the international syndicate, being probed on the basis of a Mumbai police case, which supplied opioid drugs in huge quantities to its contacts overseas. The proceeds of alleged crime in the case are currently estimated to be about ₹44.50 crore.
It is learnt that these bank accounts were in the name of certain individuals and entities related to a key accused person, Ali Asgar Shirazi, who was arrested by the agency in January and is currently in judicial custody.
Over 25 companies, partnership firms, and proprietorship concerns came under the ED scanner and four companies and partnership firms (Hustlers Hospitality Private Limited, Zetetic Techno India, Trans Air Express, Falisha Technoworld LLP, and One Logistics) have been included as accused.
Such entities were allegedly instrumental in the projection of drug money as genuine business proceeds. The investments made by some individuals in the share market and market instruments and cryptocurrency wallets were also examined in detail to trace the end usage of the money generated by the illegal sale of opioids.
Shirazi was initially arrested by the Mumbai Police in May last year when he was attempting to escape to the United Arab Emirates. The police suspected that he was instrumental in the supply of drugs worth over ₹200 crore overseas. The ED said Shirazi and others received orders through call centres being run in different parts of the country.
The operations were being run through a network of call centres, websites, logistics companies, consultancy firms, and dummy pharma companies for supply of opioid drugs to the United States and the United Kingdom. Several companies incorporated by the syndicate members in the United States and the United Kingdom had been operating payment gateways for routing the drug money to India.
Cash deposits
The ED also found many instances of cash deposits in the personal accounts as well as the accounts of logistics companies controlled by various individuals linked to Shirazi, as alleged.
A preliminary inquiry indicated that these entities did not have offices, employees or the licences required for running logistics business. Such orders were meant to evade the formal controls on the use of opioids and therefore illegal. The proceeds of crime so generated were further routed through several consultancy and logistics companies/ firms by projecting the same as their legitimate earnings.
The opioid drugs were being “procured” from the dummy pharma companies and transported abroad using the logistics companies. The conduits operating in the United States and the United Kingdom further distributed the opioid drugs locally.
In the same case, the ED has conducted searches in October 2023 and January-February 2024 at 23 locations across Delhi, Mumbai, Lucknow, Ahmedabad, and Valsad (Gujarat).
Properties attached
About a week ago, the ED attached properties worth about ₹5 crore in the form of flats, a shop and land parcels purportedly belonging to Shirazi, Mehreen Shirazi, Abdul Samad, Manoj Patel, and Bhavesh Shah and the movable assets valued at ₹36.81 lakh in the form of fixed deposits and balance in the bank accounts of Ramlakhan Patel, Shobha Patel, and Hustlers Hospitality Private Limited.
As it turns out, one U.S.-based member of the syndicate named Ezhil Sezhian Kamaldoss had been held guilty by a court here in June 2022 for “conspiring to distribute millions of opioid pills and other illegal controlled substances imported from India and money laundering conspiracy”.
“The evidence at trial proved that between May 2018 and August 2019, Kamaldoss participated with others in a transnational drug-trafficking conspiracy, which involved the importation of misbranded prescription drugs, including Tramadol, a synthetic opioid, into the United States from India, re-packaging the drugs at a pill mill operating out of a warehouse in Jamaica, Queens, and shipping the drugs via United States mail to customers throughout the United States,” the U.S. Attorney’s Office, Eastern District of New York, had said.
Kamaldoss and his associates had distributed millions of Tramadol pills and conspired to launder the proceeds of the drug-trafficking operation.
