Money laundering case: Meat exporter Moin Qureshi arrested

“During the course of investigation, certain facts have emerged which constitute omission and commission of certain acts on the part of certain public servants holding high positions in public office in collusion with Moin Akhtar Qureshi…. Huge amount of illegal money was found to have been transacted,” the ED said in a statement.

It was based on an ED probe and a reference sent by the agency to the CBI last year that a case of corruption was registered against Qureshi. The FIR, based on which CBI has pursued a money laundering probe, also mentions the name of former CBI director A P Singh. In its reference, ED had said that Qureshi had accepted bribes on behalf of government officials and mentioned “a former CBI director”.

The Indian Express earlier reported that Qureshi exchanged several BBM (Blackberry Messenger) messages with Singh. The exchanges were mostly about CBI cases and seeking of small favours from Qureshi.

Making a reference to the BBM messages, the ED statement said, “Records collected from income tax department i.e. BBM message has revealed that Moin Akhtar Qureshi has taken huge amount of money from different persons for obtaining undue favours from public servants after exercising his personal influence.”

According to the ED, BBM messages were exchanged between Qureshi and some people accused in criminal cases and “also the persons who wanted to seek undue favors from the other investigating agencies of Govt. by getting them off the hook”.

The ED said an analysis of BBM messages retrieved from Qureshi’s mobile phones and that of his associates revealed that he had also used hawala operators “to transfer bribe money (belonging to government officials) to different foreign locations like Paris (France) and the UK”.

“Moin Qureshi has extorted crores of rupees from a businessman from Hyderabad, in lieu of the help provided. Moin Qureshi was found involved in hawala transactions through Delhi based hawala operators. Through them, the money was transferred to Dubai and then to Paris, London, USA, Hong Kong, Italy and Switzerland. From the premises of another hawala operator, M/s South Delhi Money Changer, huge amount of unaccounted cash was recovered,” the ED statement said.