The Enforcement Directorate, or the ED, has provisionally attached 37.064 kg of gold, valued at more than Rs 54 crore, in connection with a money laundering investigation into an alleged gold smuggling network.
The attachment was made by the ED’s Guwahati Zonal Office under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA), 2002, in a case against Akshay Parshuram Bansode and other unidentified persons.
The seized gold is currently in the custody of the Kamrup Metro Treasury in Guwahati. The ED, which investigates financial crimes, initiated its PMLA investigation on the basis of a case registered at Latasil Police Station in Kamrup Metro district. The police case relates to alleged organised illegal transportation and concealment of smuggled gold, as well as criminal conspiracy. He allegedly worked on the instructions of an unidentified person who controlled a syndicate of couriers. The investigation has also indicated that the gold was allegedly smuggled into India through Myanmar and the UAE. The ED has alleged that payments connected with the transactions were routed through hawala channels. The agency is also examining how the allegedly smuggled gold was sought to be brought into the formal bullion market. A separate claim of ownership over the seized gold was also examined during the investigation. The claimant sought to establish ownership through invoices that were projected as sale documents. However, the jurisdictional court found the invoices to be prima facie fabricated and rejected the claimant’s application seeking release of the gold.
The gold was originally seized by Assam Police on June 30 this year allegedly from the possession of Bansode at Kharghuli Hatisil in Guwahati.
The investigation has indicated that Bansode had allegedly been involved in transporting gold across different parts of India for several years, according to the ED. Invoices were generated by certain traders linked to a bullion refining company and were allegedly used to give the gold a legitimate appearance, according to the investigation.
