Jaipur: City police Monday arrested five men for allegedly siphoning export incentive scrips by illegally accessing govt portals in a racket officials estimate could have caused losses to the exchequer of nearly Rs 400 crore.Jaipur police commissioner Sachin Mittal identified the accused as Sultan Khan, Nand Kishor, Nirmal Soni, Ashok Kumar Bhandari and Pramod Khatri, all residents of Jodhpur.Special commissioner Om Prakash said the group created fake digital signatures using forged identity documents to break into exporters’ accounts on the official Director General of Foreign Trade-Indian Customs Electronic Gateway (DGFT-ICEGATE) system and divert duty credit scrips.“They procured fake Digital Signature Certificates (DSCs) using forged Aadhaar and PAN card details. These signatures were then used to gain unauthorised access to the DGFT-ICEGATE system, which exporters use to manage govt-issued incentives linked to imports and exports,” Prakash said.Police said the accused extracted details of genuine exporters and transferred duty credit scrips issued under export-linked incentive schemes such as RODTEP and ROSCTL into fake importer-exporter code (IEC) accounts controlled by them. The scrips were then encashed or sold off.Investigators said the proceeds were routed through multiple ‘mule accounts’ (legitimate bank accounts used by criminals to receive, transfer or launder illegally obtained funds) to conceal the money trail.
