More than 8,500 monetary transactions under scanner
New Delhi: The Enforcement Directorate (ED) is probing a “complex network” of agents and facilitators in India, Canada and the US who help Indians illegally enter the US via “bogus” admissions in Canadian colleges, officials said on Friday.
More than 8,500 monetary transactions are under the scanner of the federal probe agency in a case booked under the anti-money laundering law and taking cognisance of a Gujarat police crime branch FIR of 2023, they said.
Some international financial companies that aid remittances of funds abroad are also under the investigation scanner of the ED after it conducted 35 searches over the last one year and seized assets worth Rs 92 lakh, the officials said.
The issue has been centre-stage of discourse in Parliament and outside after a US military aircraft carrying 104 deported Indians landed in Amritsar on Wednesday.
On Thursday, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar informed Parliament that deportations by the US were organised and executed by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) authorities and 15,668 illegal Indian immigrants have been deported from the US since 2009.
On December 24 last year, the ED had said in a press statement that it was investigating the alleged involvement of some Canadian colleges and a few Indian entities in a money laundering case linked to the trafficking of Indians into the US from the Canada border.
The investigation is linked to the death of a four-member Indian family, hailing from Dingucha village in Gujarat. All four died of extreme cold while trying to cross the Canada-US border illegally on January 19, 2022.
Officials said the agency’s probe, till now, has found that there was a “complex network” of agents and “facilitators” spread out in India, Canada and the US. This network manages or facilitates the stay, transportation, visa arrangement and legal issues etc of illegal immigrants, who immigrated through the route of taking “bogus” admission in colleges based in Canada.
One such agent named Fenil Kantilal Patel is based in Canada, the officials said.
ED investigators found that the fees paid to Canadian colleges was paid through a financial services providing company and it was detected that around 8,500 such transactions were made by Gujarat-based students from September 7, 2021 to August 9, 2024.
The agency found that about 4,300 of these transactions were duplicate or done by one user. It is suspected that around 370 individuals have moved to the US using this “illegal” immigration modus operandi, the officials said.
The statement of some of the parents and guardians of these Canada-enrolled students have been recorded and further investigation is going on, they said.
The agency had earlier said that as part of this racket, the accused “arranged” admission in colleges and universities in Canada for people wanted to go to the US illegally.
