New Delhi: The Enforcement Directorate team of Ahmedabad Zonal Office conducted simultaneous raids in Ahmedabad and Mumbai and searched several locations linked to Megh Shah and Mahendra Shah. This action was taken under the investigation of alleged foreign exchange violations under the Foreign Exchange Management Act, 1999.

During the search, the ED recovered Rs 15 lakh in cash, four luxury cars – BMW X6M, Bentley Continental GT, BMW 730 LD and BMW 328i. Apart from this, imported watches of brands like Rolex and Cartier were also seized, whose total value was estimated at Rs 1.51 crore. Seals and check books of about 40 companies were also recovered.

This case is related to a major action taken by the Directorate of Revenue Intelligence and Gujarat Anti-Terrorism Squad earlier this year. Then about 88 kg of gold was recovered from the flat of Megh Shah and his father Mahendra Shah in Paldi area of Ahmedabad, out of which 52 kg had seals of Dubai, Australia and Switzerland.

This recovery was pointing towards international gold smuggling. Along with this, 19.66 kg of studded jewellery and Rs 1.37 crore in cash were also found. The total value of the recovery was more than Rs 80 crore.

It is alleged that they used to run a network to convert illegal cash into legal property on 15% commission. Shah father-son are accused of being involved in a large gold smuggling and hawala network involving more than 500 people, which used to do hawala transactions to fund illegal gold imports.