Need for serious intervention into IRS call centre racket: Mukul

Syllad | The Rising MeghalayaDecember 9, 2020

Leader of Opposition Mukul Sangma has emphasized the need for serious intervention into the fake US’ Internal Revenue Service (IRS) call centre racket.

“This requires a serious intervention. We must know who were there who had the courage to really engage in this kind of recruiting our people and training them under whose behest? Please don’t take this lightly as we are not going to take this lightly,” Mukul told reporters on Wednesday.

The racket was busted by the state police in 2017, for duping thousands of unsuspecting international clients including citizens from the United States and the UK.

This was following raids conducted at the IFA Enterprise Call Centre, which was operating from the premises of SS NetCom, Dhankheti, Shillong.

Reacting to  Chief Minister Conrad K Sangma’s allegation that it was a personal attack on his family, Mukul said, “Now if something is happening in somebody’s residence whether it is by default or by plan or by design, if we are speaking about certain cases which is required to be taken to its logical conclusion, why should it be considered as personal.”

“Please remember when I talked about that relevant case of Laitumkhrah pertaining to the case of impersonation of IRS officers and duping citizens of other countries, who have the discrepancies in their tax return,

Please remember that two of the employees of the SS Netcom were also arrested, interrogated and they have confessed that they were recruiting people and then handing over to IFA – these are all on records,” he said.

Stating that there were also lots of financial transactions, Mukul however said investigation has not gone thus far to find out where the transaction has taken place from which account to which account.

“Therefore, how are they saying that the investigation is completed and the charge-sheeted. If incomplete charge-sheet is submitted before the court then that means it amounts to deliberate intention to hide the facts and destroy evidence,” he said.

Stating that this should not happen as it involves training of our youths, Mukul said one of the trainees in her statement had revealed that she was trained to be a criminal to be able to impersonate (as IRS officer).

“That is why I am saying is it not there a necessity to investigate to further prevent such adventurism by anybody in the long run, adventurism to train our youths to become criminals very dangerous,” he said.

Meanwhile, the former chief minister also said that during their time, lots of skill training programmes were given and lots of service providers were awarded that responsibility of giving skill training programmes including SS Netcom.

“Now was the people part of the giving training from the money of the government. If that is there, then that is another case,” he said.

“If the government programme is to train someone to become skilled in IT sector and subsequently they are trained in something else to be part of a team of criminal gang, then that will destroy our generation next. It is very dangerous to have our young youth to be allowed to be a victim of this kind of network of criminal activities,” he added.

Mukul further stated “That is why during our time, I told the concerned officers engaged in the investigation please don’t allow anybody to interfere and allow the law to take its own course. We want that law should prevail and take its own course.”