The Enforcement Directorate has arrested four persons including a Chinese national, in a money laundering case against Chinese mobile phone company Vivo, which has been accused of diverting ₹62,476 crore to Beijing to avoid taxes in India.
The sleuths have seized cash amounting to more than ₹10 lakh and other documents during the raids, and arrested four persons — Guangwen Kyang aka Andrew Kuang, the Chinese National, Hari Om Rai, Managing Director of Lava International, Rajan Malik and Nitin Garg, a Chartered Accountant, in a PMLA case registered on February 3, 2022.
The ED is expected to produce the four arrested accused before a special PMLA court for seeking their custody.
Last year, the anti-money laundering agency had carried searches at 44 locations in different parts of the country against Vivo Mobiles India Private Ltd and its 23 associated firms including Grand Prospect International Communication Pvt Ltd (GPICPL). Vivo Mobiles India Private Ltd is a subsidiary of the Hong Kong-based Multi Accord Ltd and was registered at Registrar of Companies (ROC), New Delhi, on August 1, 2014.
Four months later, the GPICPL was registered again on December 3 at the ROC Shimla. As per the ED, GPICPL was incorporated by Chinese nationals, Zhengshen Ou, Bin Lou and Zhang Jie — with the help of chartered accountant Nitin Garg, who was arrested by the ED. All the three Chinese nationals flew out of the country after that. While Bin Lou left India on April 26, 2018, Zhengshen Ou and Zhang Jie went out in 2021, as per the agency.
The ED took up the case originally registered by the Kalkaji police station in the national capital against the GPICPL and its director, shareholders and certifying professionals. The trigger for police investigation was a complaint lodged by the Ministry of Corporate Affairs which had smelt rat in the Chinese mobile phone business proposition.
The Delhi police in its FIR had charged that the GPICPL’s registration was done on forged identification documents and wrong addresses since it turned out to be a government building and a residence of a bureaucrat.
Vivo’s other dealings are also under the scanner. The Delhi police, in a separate case, charged that Vivo helped transfer funds illegally to NewsClick, an online news portal under probe for allegedly spreading Chinese propaganda.