ED confiscated about 77 crore rupees of 7 Chinese and their associate Indian companies, warned payment gateway

ED has taken strict action against China’s loan app companies and their Indian partners. ED has seized Rs 76.67 crore of bank accounts and payment gateways of 7 companies by issuing provision attachment orders under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA 2002).

Action after FIR

The agency has taken this step following an FIR lodged by the Bengaluru CID. In this, many customers had alleged that the recovery agents of the loan company were harassing them. 76.67 crore seized by ED belongs to 7 companies. These include Mad Elephant Network Technology Private Limited, Baryonyx Technology Private Limited and Cloud Atlas Future Technology.

These companies are originally from China. Apart from this, there are X10 Financial Services Private Limited, Track Fin-Aid Private Limited and Jamnadas Morarjee Finance Private Limited. These are companies in the NBFC sector.

Sent an alert in January

In January, ED and CID units had asked several payment gateways including RazorPay and Paytm, not to transact with Chinese loan apps. There are two dozen such Chinese loan apps, including SnapIT Loan, Bubble Loan, Go Cash and Flip Cash. These apps are connected to the Direct Payment Gateway. This does not check their transaction processing and payment.

The Enforcement Directorate and the CIDs of several states had issued a notice to the payment gateway to cancel the license of loan app supported by Chinese companies. The reason for this was that investigations are being conducted against them for opening accounts of fake companies.