By Tenzin Dharpo
DHARAMSHALA, Aug. 13: A Chinese national earlier held for suspicion of impersonation and forgery has been arrested on Tuesday in the National Capital Region (NCR), for money laundering and hawala racket, after a massive search operation by the Delhi police.
On Tuesday, India’s tax department conducted searches in 21 locations in Delhi, Ghaziabad, and Gurugram after getting “credible information” of the Chinese involvement in money laundering and hawala network. The Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) in a statement said, “Based on the credible information that few Chinese individuals and their Indian associates were involved in money laundering and hawala transactions through series of shell entities, a search action was mounted at various premises of these Chinese entities, their close confederates and couple of bank employees.”
The Chinese national identified to be Luo Sang, who held the fake identity ‘Charlie Peng’ was also arrested in connection with the money laundering and hawala racket. At the time of his arrest, security agencies seized two fake Aadhar cards, two forged Indian passports, a fake PAN card. Lou Sang still operates as Charlie Peng and lives in Gurugram. According to the CBDT, he was using 8-10 bank accounts and represented fake Chinese companies in hawala operations worth Rs 1000 crores.
Sang was earlier arrested in 2018, by a joint team of central intelligence agencies and the Delhi Police special cell for impersonation and forgery. He had married an Indian national to expedite acquiring an Indian passport. The investigators alleged that he was working for Chinese intelligence agencies and running business of hawala transactions through a currency exchange firm, but he was granted bail by a Delhi court in 2019.
During the interrogations at the time, Sang reportedly admitted to various narratives including being a Tibetan fleeing Chinese persecution, a criminal who was forced into spying by the Chinese government as well as being a PLA soldier. “He was a hard nut to crack. A trained spy, he confused his interrogators. He repeatedly changed his Chinese background story several times to hoodwink us,” recalled an official who questioned him in 2018, cited by Indian daily Times Now News.
The Indian news agency also revealed that Sang who admitted to interrogators of being a spy said that his two prime tasks were to somehow try to enter the inner circle of Dalai Lama for which he made several trips to Himachal Pradesh where the Tibetan leader resides and also to Majnu-ka-tilla Tibetan colony in Delhi. And to assist Chinese embassy officials help transfer money and arrange logistics for them like providing cars and arranging their travel.
In 2013, a Tibetan-origin man and suspected Chinese espionage operative Pema Tsering was arrested in McLeod Ganj, Dharamshala, where the exiled Tibetan leader His Holiness the Dalai Lama resides. Police at the time said that during interrogation, Tsering admitted to being an ex-member of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) of China and also having served in the People’s Armed Police Force (PAPF).
No comments:
Post a Comment