Paytm, Razorpay, PayU, Easebuzz and four other payment gateways are being investigated as the Enforcement Directorate (ED) froze around Rs 500 crore in their virtual accounts over the past two years in connection with some Chinese nationals running one of the biggest cryptocurrency scams, HPZ Token, from India, The Times of India has reported.
It was a pan-India operation where they allegedly collected more than Rs 2,200 crore from people across 20 states where people were given the option to invest in the mining of cryptocurrencies, including bitcoins, through mobile app HPZ Token. They then remitted the “proceeds of crime” out of the country, a part of which was frozen with the payment gateways before they were remitted to beneficiaries.
The scam unfolded while making bulk payments. The amount remained with the gateways for a day or two, during which ED had frozen around Rs 500 crore, the report added.
A PMLA court in Nagaland on January 22 declared a Delhi resident, Bhupesh Arora, a fugitive economic offender after he refused to appear before the agency, it said. ED has filed a chargesheet alleging the involvement of 298 people in the scam.
Moneycontrol couldn't independently verify the report.
ED is currently investigating the money trail and checking if the gateways had generated suspicious transaction reports (STR) and alerted the RBI.
All financial institutions have to generate STRs and report them to the RBI periodically, which then forward them to the Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU) for agencies to investigate.
PayU had the highest amount frozen in the virtual accounts at Rs 130 crore of the alleged “proceeds of crime” related to the HPZ Token scam, followed by Rs 33.4 crore with Easebuzz, Rs 18 crore with Razorpay, Rs 10.6 crore with CashFree and Rs 2.8 crore with Paytm, the report added.
The other payment gateways include WunderBaked, AgreePay and SpeedPay.
More than 50 companies were registered in Delhi having 84 bank accounts, 26 firms in Karnataka with 37 bank accounts, 19 in Haryana and 11 in Uttar Pradesh, besides Maharashtra, Gujarat, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Tamil Nadu and West Bengal, the report said.
