The government has initiated a major investigation against advance remittances - including transactions relating to Iran - worth Rs 2.6 lakh crore made during 2017-18 and 2018-19 "without corresponding imports", leading to suspicion of large scale money laundering against alleged bogus imports that could place more than 30,000 importers under the scanner. The Central Economic Intelligence Bureau (CEIB), an arm of the finance ministry, has asked the Directorate of Revenue Intelligence, Enforcement Directorate, Income Tax department and the RBI to probe these huge advance remittances against which imports have not been registered."Highest amount of advance remittance is reported in the case of State Bank of India in 1,28,654 transactions amounting to 1.79 lakh crore," a CEIB report said. The suspicious transactions involve 85 other banks and the "major beneficiary countries being Iran, Saudi Arabia, USA, China and UAE". The CEIB said advance remittances against imports and exports have been identified as one of the widely used modes of trade-based money laundering and routing of foreign exchange out of the country. “One of the striking features that emerged from analysis was that large remittances were shown against pending imports from Iran, one of the countries identified by FATF as a non-compliant country or risky jurisdiction from the perspective of money laundering and terror financing,” the CEIB said in a report shared with enforcement agencies and the RBI.