HC quashes arrest warrant of leading bullion trader
The Gujarat High Court on Friday set aside non-bailable arrest warrant issued by a special court under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act against Prithviraj Kothari, one of the biggest bullion traders in the country and managing director of Riddhi Siddhi Bullions Limited, in a Rs 5,395 crore hawala scam.
The arrest warrant issued by the lower court about 10 days ago was quashed by Justice Abhilasha Kumari. The multi-crore scam is being probed by the Enforcement Directorate (ED).
The ED officials, on condition of not being identified, claimed that Kothari had aided the main accused, Afroz Fatta, a diamond merchant, in sending over Rs 1,000 crore to his companies in Dubai via hawala channels. This money apparently travelled to tax havens and countries like the US, Singapore, Hong Kong and Switzerland.
In this particular case, the money was sent outside India between December 2013 and January 2014 allegedly on forged documents to make bogus import bills that showed import of diamonds. The ED had in March 2014 busted a multi-crore hawala scam during their search operations in offices of some diamond traders, including Fatta and Madanlal Jain, in Surat.
The ED officials said that Fatta and Jain were mere front-end men while the kingpins could be Prithviraj Kothari and his associate Rajesh Jain, who is based out of Dubai.
“Investigations show us that all the Dubai and Hong Kong-based companies were controlled by Prithviraj Kothari, Rajesh Jain and Manshukh Sanghavi. Prithviraj Kothari’s Dubai-based nephew Raju Kothari helped him control the flow of money into and from Dubai,” the officials said.
The ED officials also claimed that there were inputs from external intelligence agency Research and Analysis Wing that pointed at a possible link with former Union telecom minister A Raja, who allegedly used Chennai-based JG Group to transfer money of the 2G scam to Dubai-based Mycon General Trading Company.
The ED officials hoped that once they picked up Kothari, more skeletons could tumble out of the cupboard. However, the quashing of the arrest warrant shows perhaps the ED could find it difficult to convince the judiciary by its evidence.
