India’s monetary crime combating company searched the places of work of fintech unicorns Paytm and Razorpay in addition to Cashfree on Friday as a part of an ongoing investigation into fraudulent Chinese language mortgage apps, it mentioned Saturday, the newest in a collection of probes in latest months.
The Enforcement Directorate mentioned its searches at excessive profile Indian corporations and companies managed by Chinese language personnel had been prompted by 18 complaints made to the Cyber Crime Police in Bengaluru. The complaints alleged the companies’ involvement in “extortion and harassment of the general public who had availed small quantity of loans by the cellular apps.”
“Throughout enquiries, it has emerged that these entities are managed/operated by Chinese language individuals. The modus operandi of those entities is by utilizing solid paperwork of Indians and making them as dummy administrators of these entities, they’re producing proceeds of crime,” the company mentioned in a press release (PDF).
“It has come to note that the mentioned entities had been doing their suspected/unlawful enterprise by numerous service provider IDs/accounts held with cost gateways/banks,” the company added.
The entities operated by Chinese language personnel had been producing “proceeds of crime by service provider IDs/accounts held with cost gateways/banks,” the company mentioned. There have been discrepancies within the addresses the place they had been working and what they’d disclosed to the native authority, the company mentioned.
The company mentioned it seized an quantity of $2.13 million from Chinese language personnel-controlled entities and its searches are ongoing.
The federal government company has carried out over half a dozen probes into tech corporations this 12 months, together with at Chinese language smartphone distributors Vivo, Oppo and Xiaomi and seized greater than $1 billion of capital that it mentioned corporations had evaded in fraudulent tax computations.
Final week, it additionally searched the premises of CoinSwitch, a high native crypto change backed by Andreessen Horowitz and alleged the Indian agency acquired shares of over $200 million in violation of native foreign exchange legal guidelines, TechCrunch reported earlier.
The Enforcement Directorate additionally froze belongings value over $8 million from WazirX final month, citing suspected violation of international change rule, and $46 million from the native entity of Vauld for facilitating “crime-derived” proceeds from predatory lending corporations.
Indian authorities are cracking down on lending apps which might be charging exorbitant charges and utilizing unethical means to gather the funds again. India’s central financial institution is transferring forward with new pointers for digital lending that may mandate corporations to supply extra disclosure and transparency to learn customers in addition to prohibit a number of enterprise practices.
Google mentioned final month that it has blocked over 2,000 unethical lending apps in India this 12 months.
