New Delhi (The Hawk): On Friday, the ED announced that five locations in Bengaluru had been searched as part of the ongoing probe into the Chinese loan app issue.
According to an official, the case stems from 18 FIRs filed with the Cyber Crime Police Station in Bengaluru City against various companies and individuals for extortion and harassment of members of the public who had taken out minor loans using mobile apps operated by these companies.
As a result of the inquiry, it has become clear that the entities in question are under the control of Chinese people.
These organisations routinely use Indians whose identities have been stolen to pose as "directors" of their companies in order to launder criminal profits.
It has come to light that these organisations were conducting their illicit trade using a wide variety of merchant IDs registered with different banks and payment processors.
The search in this case was conducted after preliminary inquiry and with input from Bengaluru city's Central Crime Branch.
The search activity included the offices of the banks involved in the compliance with Razorpay Pvt Ltd.
During the search, it was discovered that the aforementioned businesses had used multiple merchant IDs with payment gateways to launder illicit funds and had provided fictitious addresses in their Know Your Customer (KYC) paperwork.
"As per section 17(1), these Chinese-controlled firms have Rs 78 Crore frozen from their merchant IDs and bank accounts. In this case, the total amount of money confiscated is Rs 95 crore "what the officer had to say.
(Inputs from Agencies)
