State leaders involved in Pune hawala racket: BJP

MUMBAI: Hasan Ali, the alleged kingpin of a huge money-laundering and hawala scam that broke out last week in Pune, is operating as the “front-man” for two powerful Union ministers from Maharashtra, the BJP alleged on Tuesday. The two ministers have invested hundreds of crores of rupees via the Mauritius’s Participatory Note route (PN route) in both capital market and commodity exchanges using Mr Ali as their investor, alleged former BJP MP Kirit Somaiya.

Mr Somaiya demanded a probe by the Government of India into all the investment activities and transactions involving Mr Ali. The two ministers from Maharashtra who have banked on Mr Ali’s services are known to Mumbai’s business and broker community as major players in the markets. “One of them is a major player and investor in commodity exchanges while the other invests in stock exchanges,” said Mr Somaiya. The BJP leader alleged that these two ministers received kickback in a major public transaction involving the global tender of a public sector undertaking (PSU) around two years back.

“It is easily the biggest kickback in the country and the payout was invested in the capital market as well as commodity market through Hasan Ali,” Mr Somaiya alleged. The BJP has also charged that the Prime Minister’s Office, finance ministry and the Intelligence Bureau (IB) had a reasonable idea about the scam for the last nine months, but all of them sat on the information since several political bigwigs from the ruling parties were involved.