Customs duty evasion case: ED raids Ponguleti Srinivas Reddy's residence, offices in Hyderabad

Hyderabad: Enforcement Directorate (ED) has raided Telangana Minister for Revenue Ponguleti Srinivas Reddy's residence and his offices in Hyderabad in connection with money laundering case linked to an alleged smuggling racket of more than Rs 100 crore.

According to sources, 16 teams are conducting the raids in Hyderabad, Khammam, and other areas simultaneously. Some cash seizure was made by the agency but the location from where it was recovered was not known, the ED officials said.

A team of central security forces personnel accompanied the ED teams.

The money laundering case stems from a 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 7 crore.

The payments for these are linked to an alleged hawala and crypto currency racket worth Rs 100 crore and a man named A Naveen Kumar is under the scanner of the ED.

During interrogation, Kumar said he acted as an intermediary between Ponguleti's son 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.

Harsha has been under the Customs department’s lens which led to them issuing a summons to him in connection with the purchase of two luxury watches-- Patek Philippe 5740 and Breguet 2759 worth Rs 1.7 crores allegedly smuggled from Hong Kong via Singapore.

The watches were seized from Mohammed Mubeen, an alleged courier and a dealer of luxury watches, who returned from Singapore on February 5.

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.

Earlier, the ED had raided Ponguleti's residence in November last year before the Assembly elections in Telangana. On November 3, the ED and IT officials conducted inspections at his residence in Khammam town. His house in Nandagiri Hills, Hyderabad was also inspected.

Similarly, searches were also conducted at Raghava Pride on Banjara Hills Road No. 10.