Hyderabad: ED Charges Prisha Pearls of Cheating India Post
The proceeds of crime (POC) — money made illegally — were withdrawn in cash with an intention to obscure the money trail. Subsequently, the withdrawn cash was deposited in the personal bank accounts of the directors of Prisha Pearls and their family members. The POC deposited in cash were layered through multiple banking transactions and integrated into the family run business of the accused persons.
Hyderabad: The Enforcement Directorate on Wednesday charged Prisha Pearls of causing a wrongful loss of Rs 7.66 crore to the postal department by under-reporting its sales to evade the payment of postage for the parcels dispatched by them through India Post.
The agency officials filed a prosecution complaint — a chargesheet — against Prisha Pearls (India) Pvt. Ltd, its Directors Nilesh Kumar Agarwal and Sailesh Kumar Agarwal, Ghanshyamdas Jewellers, Agravanshi Agro Farms LLP and Gajanand Agarwal under the provisions of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA), 2002.
According to the ED, the department of post introduced ‘Remotely Managed Franking System’ and also set up standard operating procedures to use Remotely Managed Franking Machines in order to avoid usage of postal stamps. These franking machines printed ‘Franking Impression Slips’ with unique item numbers running in chronological order in order to identify the number of franks taken from such machines.
"Prisha Pearls Pvt. Ltd purchased two such franking machines. The postal department will allot bar codes for pasting on the VPL/VPP articles to the bulk mailers. This bar code was used for tracking the movement of the booked VPL/VPP articles. The postal department, however, noticed a difference between articles dispatched and postal impressions franked by the devices used by Prisha Pearls Pvt. Ltd. After enquiring the matter, it was found that the company had booked consignments by affixing fake Franking Impression Slips created by them without paying postage amount," the ED investigation revealed.
During the probe, the ED officials found that Prisha Pearls and its directors had grossly under-reported the sales/turnover of the company during that period to hide the actual parcels dispatched by them through the postal department, by fixing coloured photocopies of the original franked impressions. With this, Prisha Pearls caused a wrongful loss of Rs 7.66 crore to the postal department.
The proceeds of crime (POC) — money made illegally — were withdrawn in cash with an intention to obscure the money trail. Subsequently, the withdrawn cash was deposited in the personal bank accounts of the directors of Prisha Pearls and their family members. The POC deposited in cash were layered through multiple banking transactions and integrated into the family run business of the accused persons.
