Enforcement Directorate (ED) has reportedly conduct raids against Chinese-controll loan apps and investment tokens and frozen funds worth Rs. 46.67 crore kept in payment gateways such as Easebuzz, Razorpay, Cashfree and Paytm.
ED is said to have frozen accounts under the anti-money laundering law.
Searches were carry out at many premises of the accused in Delhi, Mumbai, Ghaziabad, Lucknow and Gaya, as per a report.
Around Rs. 33.36 crore was reportedly found with Easebuzz in Pune, and Rs. 8.21 crore was detect from Razorpay in Bangalore.
As per report, ED had conduct raids at premises of online payment gateways including Easebuzz, Razorpay, Cashfree and Paytm earlier this week as part of an ongoing investigation on Chinese-controlled firms and investment tokens.
The central agency has seized Rs. 46.67 crore worth of funds kept in various bank accounts and virtual accounts.
The raids were conduct under provisions of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA), 2002.
As per the report, the case was register by the cybercrime unit of Kohima Police in Nagaland in October 2021.
Searches were reportedly conduct at multiple premises of the accuse in Delhi, Mumbai, Ghaziabad, Lucknow, and Gaya.
Sixteen premises of banks and payment gateways in Delhi, Gurugram, Mumbai, Pune, Chennai, Hyderabad, Jaipur, Jodhpur and Bengaluru were search with respect to an investigation related to an app-base token named HPZ and other entities, mention the report citing a statement by ED.
The ED reportedly recover many incriminating documents during the search operation.
Funds were found to be kept in the virtual accounts of the involved entities with payment aggregators.
A total of Rs. 33.36 crore was found with Easebuzz in Pune, while Rs. 8.21 crore was seized from Razorpay in Bangalore.
The ED found Rs. 1.28 crore with Cashfree Payments in Bangalore and Rs. 1.11 crore with Paytm in New Delhi.
Paytm denied the report saying that the ED had instruct the company to freeze certain amounts from MIDs of specific merchant entities.
In a tweet, the company state that none of the funds frozen by the central agency belongs to it or any of its group firms.
This is absolutely false news, as clarified by the same handle later. As mentioned in our exchange filing, ED instructed us to freeze certain amount from MIDs of specific merchant entities and none of these funds belong to Paytm or our group companies. pic.twitter.com/CAWKmnLGB5
— Paytm (@Paytm) September 16, 2022
Easebuzz and Cashfree Payments also dismiss the reports.
Easebuzz spokesperson said in a statement :
Cashfree Payments spokesperson Said :