Ahmedabad: The Ahmedabad zonal unit of the Directorate of Revenue Intelligence (DRI) has made one more arrest in the multi-crore duty evasion scam in import and export of mulberry silk. Tabib Ali Sayed was arrested from Mumbai on Thursday night and was produced before the additional chief metropolitan magistrate in Ahmedabad. He has been sent to judicial custody.
This is the fourth arrest in the case. Earlier on Wednesday, J B Jhala, the superintendent in central excise, Dhrangadhra range, Surendranagar division, was arrested for his involvement in the scam. The racket, being carried out from Dhrangadhra, was unearthed last month and resulted in the arrest of two men: Jitendra Mistry and Kaumil Ranpura.
According to DRI officials, the duty evasion in the case has gone up to Rs 165 crore and is likely cross Rs 300 crore. The officials said that Sayed was working with one of the masterminds of the scam, Ashish Agarwal. Sayed got a firm, Huda Texprint, registered with various agencies with the intent of doing business.
Later Sayed opened a bank account and gave away a signed cheque book to Agarwal to carry out the scam. Sayed was supposed to get a commission.
Using the same modus operandi, more than 10 such fake companies were set up to orchestrate duty evasion. When Agarwal died of cancer, a Bangalore-based mastermind took charge of everything.
According to DRI officials, they found that some exporters were making deemed exports by supplying mulberry silk fabrics to a 100% Export Oriented Unit (EOU), Shree Keshri Exports, based in Dhrangadhra on the basis of forged documents. On verification, DRI officials found that these exporters existed only on paper and the forged documents were purportedly issued by the central excise office.
According to officials, Shree Keshri Exports had obtained Duty Free Import Authorization (DFIA) licences worth more than Rs 100 crore. DRI had booked a case of DFIA fraud.
Jhala was instrumental in the issuance of these DFIA licenses despite knowing that the EOU was non-operational.
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