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Hyderabad, Oct 17 (IANS) The Enforcement Directorate (ED) conducted searches at the premises of five full-fledged money changers (FFMCs) in Hyderabad. This information was given in a statement of the agency on Friday.
ED, Hyderabad zonal office said searches were conducted on Thursday at the premises of Prism Forex Pvt Ltd, Garuda Forex Services Pvt Ltd, Shree Vimal Nath Forex Pvt Ltd, Victory Forex and Travel Services Pvt Ltd and Digital Forex Pvt Ltd under the provisions of the Foreign Exchange Management Act (FEMA), 1999.
The search operation revealed that these FFMCs were operating illegally without any valid license from the Reserve Bank of India (RBI).
Earlier, RBI Hyderabad had conducted inspections in such FFMCs and found several irregularities, such as KYC documents without corresponding travel tickets, wrong/fictitious passenger names, fake/counterfeit flight tickets, manipulation of dates and flight numbers of flights, discrepancy in signatures of customers etc., the ED said in a statement. Furthermore, multiple copies of the same travel ticket were recovered, in which key details were forged. Sales were mostly shown against travel to common destinations such as Indonesia, Maldives, Thailand and Sri Lanka, where visas are not required.
Due to RBI inspection, RBI licenses were surrendered by FFMC in June-July this year. ED investigation revealed that even after surrender of RBI licenses, some FFMCs, namely Prism Forex, Victory Forex & Travel Services and Digital Forex Private Limited, were continuing to operate and engage in illegal money changing business by displaying fake/counterfeit RBI licenses at their premises.
The search under FEMA resulted in recovery of incriminating documents, mobile phones and laptops containing records of illegal foreign exchange transactions. Unaccounted Indian currency worth Rs 11.99 lakh and foreign currency of different countries of different denominations equivalent to approximately Rs 26.77 lakh were also seized during the search.
ED said, further investigation is going on.
–IANS
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