Click to play videoHyderabad: Horse trader and allegedly India's biggest tax evader, Hasan Ali's trail has led the Enforcement Directorate (ED) to Hyderabad.
Officials now say that his trail has led them to at least 50 IT companies which started their businesses, made a couple of deals and then shut down.
If the ED has it right, then at least 20 of these companies could be part of the Hasan Ali empire.
Says Director STPI Hyderabad, Manoj Kumar, "We are providing all the details and the assistance that the ED has asked us for."
The modus operandi is simple:
- Float a software company
- Procure a fake order from a bogus overseas customer
- Deliver the end product in the form of a CD or other storage device so that the output is NOT verified by agencies at any point
- The fly by night company gets paid through a legitimate banking system
- They then wind up the business While the payment lingers on in the system as laundered black money
Sources in the ED feel it was this route which Hasan explored to bring in a huge amount of black money laundering it in the process.
Says Kumar, "We are working with the Enforcement agencies to find out the details of other such suspicious companies."
The same view is shared by the umbrella body of software exporters.
Says V-P Hyderabad Software Exporters Association, Dr Anil Jampala, "There are no specific details, but nothing can't be ruled out yet."
In the last one year the number of IT companies shutting shops have out-numbered the new entrants. While the real estate boom continues to beat all expectations, the investigators believe that this money could find it roots in the Hawala operations routes through these companies.
The real estate boom in Hyderabad is very real.
Sample this: 18 big housing projects were sanctioned in the year 2002 and 2003, which became 25 projects in 2004 and 22 in 2005 before jumping to a huge 343 project layouts which got sanctioned in 2006.
Now the investigating agencies are trying to find out the connection between software companies that shut down and housing projects that sprang up from thin air - funded by a never ending supply of money - which has left behind a trail pointing to Hasan Ali.
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