Chinese money laundering racket busted in India & Australia

India’s crackdown on China is intensifying. On Tuesday, income tax officials busted a major laundering racket after raiding at least two dozen premises in three cities.

A nexus of shell companies and dubious firms has been exposed. It is a Rs 1,000 crore money laundering racket which is over $100 million.

100 crore alone was taken as bogus advances from shell entitles to operate businesses of retail showrooms in India. WION has learned that searches were conducted at 21 locations. They were spread out across Delhi, Ghaziabad and Gurugram.

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It wasn’t a one-man operation. It involved Chinese entities, their close confederates and a couple of bank employees. The Chinese nationals created more than 40 bank accounts. One Chinese man has been named - Luo Sang. He has been detained. He reportedly entered India illegally from Nepal in 2014 and took up a fake name Charlie Peng.

Later, he married a woman from Mizoram and assumed an Indian identity using that he managed to get an Aadhaar card, a PAN card and even a passport. Luo Sang has been booked for laundering before. He was granted bail in 2019. Now he has been caught again allegedly Luo Sang was using eight to ten bank accounts. He represented fake Chinese companies in laundering operations worth Rs 300 crore.

Chinese money launderers have been busted in Australia too. Two men have been arrested in Sydney. They have been accused of laundering "tens of millions of dollars". The police claim that they were moving money made from illegal drug sales.

Daigou, Sydney-based surrogate shopping business was used. It is a service that is very popular among the Chinese community. Daigou translates to "buying on behalf of". It is a service where shopping agents buy things abroad for customers on the Chinese mainland and later they ship it there.