Big fish and alleged Sonia associate Moin Qureshi in ED net

Controversial businessman and alleged hawala operator Moin Qureshi has been finally arrested by the Enforcement Directorate (ED).

Qureshi was arrested late on Friday night after he was called in for questioning by the ED. A local court on Saturday sent him to the agency's custody till 31 August.

The businessman, said to be close to many influential political leaders across the spectrum, has been under investigation by the ED for alleged money laundering, after the agency filed two cases under the stringent Prevention of Money Laundering Act.

He is also being probed for violation of the Foreign Exchange Management Act, beside the Income Tax probe under the new black money law, and a CBI probe.

Friends in high places

Qureshi's arrest, while not a surprise since investigations had started even before the present BJP government took over at the Centre, can still be seen as a message to the Congress.

This is because Qureshi's name hadn't flashed up in the limelight until Narendra Modi, the BJP's Prime Ministerial candidate at the time, raised the issue in a Lok Sabha election rally in Akbarpur. Modi had alleged that the exporter's links went right up to 10 Janpath, the official residence of Congress president Sonia Gandhi.

After the arrest, the official Twitter handle of the Director, ED, tweeted the news, saying Qureshi had been arrested on charges of accepting huge amounts of money in the name of public servants.

The agency reportedly said evidence given to it by the Income Tax constitutes “omission and commission of certain acts on the part of certain public servants holding high positions in the public office in collusion with Qureshi, thereby huge amount of illegal money was found to have been transacted".

Indeed, the latest FIR registered by the ED, earlier this year, names AP Singh, the former CBI chief who is also being probed by the CBI. The first FIR under PMLA was registered in 2015.

Ranjit Sinha, who took over from Singh as the CBI chief, also came under the arc of the probe for his links with the hawala dealer after the visitors' logbook at his official residence made its way to a newspaper.

Case history

It all started with Income Tax department raids in February 2014, which followed alleged tapping of phones, according to reports.

The raids at multiple places associated with Qureshi led the IT department to recover several incriminating BlackBerry Messenger texts, beside cash and other documents, related to laundering of money in various countries, including Singapore, Switzerland etc.

The BBM message exchanges between Singh and Qureshi pointed to a possible quid pro quo, according to the agencies.

Sinha, too, found himself spooked by the raids, and expressed anguish over how the matter was “being selectively leaked to the media”, and how a “witchhunt was afoot against the agency”.

Sinha had then written to the Central Board of Direct Taxes to provide the CBI with details of the investigations concerning the role of CBI officials.

However, he found himself singed a couple of months later, after an expose featuring the visitors' diary at 2 Janpath, then his official residence.

The diary, which later became the basis of the SC's intervention to order an investigation, also had details of how Qureshi continued to visit Sinha after Singh demitted office.

Qureshi, reportedly, visited Sinha at least 90 times in 15 months. Moreover, there were instances when Qureshi and Singh met Sinha on the same day.

There is a Qureshi connection to both Singh and Sinha coming under the arc of the investigation of the agency they led.

Both have tried to present their defence.

Singh claims the messages the ED and the CBI were basing their investigations on had been in the public domain for over three years.

“Income Tax and Enforcement Directorate have not added anything further. None of the purported messages sent through BlackBerry Messenger (BBM) pertain to the CBI investigations. They are mostly personal and innocuous in nature as between friends,” he reportedly said, after CBI raids at his house earlier this year.

He also claimed he was being targeted, although he did not spell out the reasons.

Sinha, too, in the SC, had argued that the SC was adopting double standards by throwing out the Sahara-Birla diaries, while ordering an investigation against him based on a visitors' diary. He claimed the Sahara-Birla were far worse in terms of quality of evidence.

Qureshi's rise

Qureshi's business interests include meat processing, real estate and even fashion marketing, run by daughter Pernia Qureshi.

Born to a small-time meat trader in Rampur, Qureshi was the privileged one among three sons. He attended Doon School in Dehradun and later St Stephen's College in New Delhi.

His rise is also attributed to the connections he developed with alumni of both these institutions.

Qureshi's big break, however, came in the mid-1990 after he and his associate, Ponty Chadha, managed to get the licence for alcohol trade in Punjab.