Congress on Monday, sought an answer from the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and its prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi for his alleged ‘ covert relationship, protection and friendship with one of the biggest hawala rackets unearthed a few days back’ which raises serious questions.
“On 22nd March of this year, Enforcement Directorate of Surat and Ahmedabad had unearthed a hawala racket which at that point of time was worth 700 crores of rupees, this came to the fore after raids conducted on the residence of Afroz Fatta, a well known BJP supporter and prodigy of Modi who has often been seen in various social and political functions including holding meetings in the office of the chief minister (Modi),” Congress spokesperson Raneep Surjewala said while speaking at his party’s press conference.
Surjewala also added that this money-laundering racket was unearthed by the Enforcement Directorate showed that money got through this process was used for gold smuggling which was being promoted.
“As far as details released by ED officials, the hawala (money-laundering) racket being conducted was rather a symbol. Fake bills were being raised for import and export of diamond consignment, each transaction were done through private banks of Surat and money were being transmitted to Hong Kong and Dubai, in reality it was found that nothing was ever exported. This hawala money as per ED officials was being brought back into India on gold smuggling. This gold was later smuggled into the country,” Surjewala added.
The Congress spokesperson also said that the entire incident had an underworld connection to it.
“Last but not the least there was an underworld connection. Pursuant to these raids on March 22nd of this year, on the 28th of March 2014, four shooters of underworld don Babloo Srivastava conducted a shooting of a gentleman called Amjad Dalal, brother of Afzal Dalal, who is a business partner of Afroz Fatta . While shooting him they mistakenly identified him twice as Afroz as is now recorded in the records of the police. Fatta had filed a complaint to the Surat police that he was receiving life-threat from an Estonian number for an alleged demand of 150 crore rupees,” Surjewala remarked. (ANI)