April 25, 2018
Mohammad Farooq alias Farooq Shaikh, one of the city’s biggest hawala operators, was arrested by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) on Tuesday in a Rs 2,253-crore money laundering case involving his Stelkon Infratel Pvt Ltd. Stelkon was part of Farooq’s network of 160 shell companies and was run from a one-room office in Zaveri Bazaar.Farooq was on the radar of various probe agencies since 2014 and is believed to be associated with underworld elements, said officials.The Directorate of Revenue Intelligence had investigated the case of inflated remittances abroad and submitted a report to the ED in 2016 for action under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act. Last May, the CBI registered a case as it suspected the role of bank officials in the scam (see box). Subsequently, ED too registered a money laundering case against the same set of the accused.