Crime Reporter: CID has arrested 6 active members of illegal hundi business controllers under the guise of Mobile Financial Services (MFS) agent business in various places of Comilla and Dhaka. On Tuesday (November 22), CID’s cyber crime unit conducted an operation and arrested the hundi traders. The arrested are Mir Md Kamrul Hasan Shishir (28), Khorshed Alam (34), Md Ibrahim Khalil (34), Kazi Shah Newaz (46), Md Azizul Haque Talukder (42) and Md Nizam Uddin (35). 11 mobiles, 18 SIM cards, 1 laptop and 1 tab were seized from the arrested. CID Additional IGP Mohammad Ali Mia confirmed this information to the media in a press conference.
He said that remittances are the lifeblood of Bangladesh’s economy. The government is very active in dealing with the pressure that the recent global situation has put on the country’s economy. Hundi has always been a big challenge for the reserves. To address this risk to the economy of Bangladesh, the CID began monitoring the hundi activities. CID intelligence gathering found more than five thousand such MFS agent accounts being tracked by MFS. CID’s financial crime and cybercrime unit in Dhaka previously jointly conducted three raids in Chittagong and arrested a total of 16 people. Following this, CID’s cybercrime unit conducted another raid and arrested 6 people from two gangs from Comilla and Dhaka.
The CID chief said that the arrested gangs have been doing hundi business and illegally smuggling money abroad through hundi and the hard-earned money of wage earners staying abroad by paying the price in local currency instead of bringing it from abroad to Bangladesh. Send and pay in local currency at the equivalent value of the said foreign currency. In this work, the criminals are divided into three groups. The first group collects foreign currency from expatriates based abroad, giving it to those who want to launder the money out of the country.May be an image of 8 people, people standing and indoor.
He said the second group of smugglers and their accomplices paid the money in local currency to the agents of MFS. The third group i.e. MFS agent pays the price in local currency to the MFS number received from the resident abroad. Chakraduti is constantly raking in crores of rupees through cash in using MFS illegally. It is initially believed that each cycle made around 3 crore rupees from last April to August.
CID’s Additional IGP Mohammad Ali Mia said, Bikash Distribution House JA Enterprises, owned by Mohammad Khorshed Alam (42), located in Laksam, Comilla, transacts 200 to 300 crore rupees every month through two thousand agent SIMs. The CID worked with 2 suspicious agent SIMs through which it received information about suspicious transactions worth approximately Rs 3 crore in the last 6 months. After working with these two SIMs, the CID found 11 more such agent SIMs. Through whom such suspicious and digital hundi transaction information is available.
Preliminary interrogation of the arrested and CID investigations so far have revealed that several agent members of A2000 Agent SIM are directly involved in illegal activities like hundi. They are using several software to complete the work of digital hundi in easy accurate and fastest way.
According to the questioning of the arrested, Freemdomflexi24.com (freedomflexi24.com) is a software through which Saudi expatriate hundi traders input the numbers to which money will be sent to Bangladesh and the money is directly distributed to the recipient through Bangladeshi hundi agents with the help of various MFS agents in Bangladesh. would approach
With the help of agents of MFS, the gang members are also operating many illegal businesses including online gambling, video streaming virtual currency buying and selling, drug trading, gold smuggling, yaba business, along with acquiring fixed assets abroad.
CID said, that 24(2)/30(2)/31(2)/35(2) of Digital Security Act 2018, including 406/417 Penal Code has been registered against the arrested Hundi traders.
