Hyderabad: The Enforcement Directorate on Friday raided multiple premises linked to Telangana Revenue Minister P Srinivasa Reddy and some others as part of a money laundering case linked to an alleged smuggling racket of more than Rs 100 crore, official sources said.
About five premises in the state, including Hyderabad, are being searched. Some cash seizure was made by the agency but the location from where it was recovered was not known, they said. A team of central security forces personnel accompanied the ED teams.
The money laundering case stems from a Customs/Directorate of Revenue Intelligence (DRI) complaint against Reddy's son, Harsha Reddy, of the Raghav Group, who is alleged to have purchased seven watches worth Rs 5 crore.
The payments for these are linked to an alleged hawala and cryptocurrency racket worth Rs 100 crore and a man named A Naveen Kumar is under the scanner of the ED. Ponguleti Srinivasa Reddy, a Congress leader, is the minister for Revenue, Housing, Information and Public Relations in the Telangana government.
Harsha Reddy had earlier denied charges of wrongdoing and termed the allegations against himself as baseless. He was summoned by the Chennai Customs Department in April for questioning in the case following an interception made by its officials on February 5 when two luxury watches -- Patek Philippe 5740 and Breguet 2759 -- were seized from a Hong Kong-based Indian Muhammed Faherdeen Mubeen, who came to Chennai from Singapore.
The original value of the watches was estimated by the Customs Department to be Rs 1.73 crore. The Patek Philippe has no dealer in India, while the Breguet is out of stock in the Indian market, according to an official press release by the Customs Department. According to Customs, Harsha Reddy has been allegedly identified as the buyer of the watches from Mubeen through an intermediary Alokam Naveen Kumar.
During interrogation, Kumar said he acted as an intermediary between Harsha Reddy and Mubeen, a luxury watch dealer, and facilitated payments for the transaction through USDT -- a form of cryptocurrency -- and cash, using the hawala route, Customs sources had claimed, quoting Kumar's statements. Dismissing an anticipatory bail petition moved by Kumar, the Madras High Court, in its order on March 18, said the amount involved in the overall smuggling of luxury watches over a period might be more than Rs 100 crore, based on a perusal of records.
