Nagarjan, Santiago Martin and another person allegedly ran a fake lottery business in Tamil Nadu, West Bengal and North-Eastern states under the companys name of General System and Future Plan Enterprise.
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As per the intelligence agency’s report, money produced through the convoluted telephone bank hawala structure is channelled to Pakistan through an indirect route. Investigators are now looking for the five suspects who they say are members of the gang and have been charged with fraud and similar money laundering schemes in the past. In 2011, Martin, at a cost of Rs 20 crore, produced a Tamil film titled Ilaignan, based on a story written by DMK chief and then Tamil Nadu chief minister M Karunanidhi.
The IB officers are suspecting that a huge amount of cash has been transferred to Dubai through the worldwide hawala channel.
Sources said the entire racket could be worth about Rs 1,000 crore and few lottery kingpins are under the scanner of the probe agencies. Sources said over Rs 50 crore have been accounted for till now according to initial estimates, but the amount could be much higher once the exercise of counting the currency is over. Intelligence agencies are gathering more information on these companies. Sources informed that retail shops with running a lottery business as another trade were also found. The searches are primarily being conducted at the offices located on Sarat Bose road in South Kolkata where Special Task Force (STF) of Kolkata Police is also present.
A senior IB officer told IBNS: After interrogating X Alexander, who was detained earlier on Thursday, one of the main accused S Nagarjan has been detained from a flat at Hazra area on Kolkata last night.
The money was stashed in travel and gunny bags and also in a 6 feet almirah in one of the premises.
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They said an ED team today met I-T officials in the West Bengal capital but as of now the leads are being processed to see if a regular case of foreign exchange violation or money laundering could be made out.
