New Delhi: The Enforcement Directorate (ED) may question a bureaucrat and few government officials on whose address a Chinese national and an ex-director of Vivo, had incorporated a firm.
The Chinese national had intentionally provided address of Solan, Himachal Pradesh and Gandhinagar, Jammu, and one of the addresses was found to be a government building and of a senior bureaucrat.
Chinese smartphone company Vivo’s top executives, directors Zhengshen Ou and Zhang Jie, had fled from India via Nepal. The ED has learnt that the firm was involved in huge Hawala transactions.
In February this year, the ED initiated a money laundering case against them on the basis of an FIR lodged with Kalkaji Police Station of Delhi under sections 417, 120B and 420 of IPC, 1860 against Grand Prospect International Communication Private Limited (GPICPL) and its Director, shareholders and certifying professionals etc on the basis of complaint filed by Ministry of Corporate Affairs.
As per the FIR, GPICPL and its shareholders had used forged identification documents and falsified addresses at the time of incorporation. The allegations were found to be true as the investigation revealed that the addresses mentioned by the directors of GPICPL did not belong to them, but in fact it was a government building and house of a senior bureaucrat.
The ED has said that out of the total sale proceeds of Rs 1,25,185 crores, Vivo India remitted Rs 62,476 crores. i.e, almost 50 per cent of the turnover out of India, mainly to China.
A senior ED official said that on July 5 they carried out searchs at 48 locations spanning across the country belonging to VIVO Mobiles India Private Limited and its 23 associated companies such as GPICPL.
Vivo Mobiles India Pvt Ltd was incorporated on August 1, 2014 as a subsidiary of Multi Accord Ltd, a Hong Kong based company and was registered at ROC Delhi. GPICPL was registered on December 3, 2014 at ROC Shimla, with registered addresses of Solan, Himachal Pradesh and Gandhinagar, Jammu.
The said company was incorporated by Zhengshen Ou, Bin Lou and Zhang Jie with the help of one Nitin Garg, a Chartered Accountant (CA).
Lou left India on April 26, 2018 whereas Ou and Jie left India in 2021.