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Mumbai: On Thursday, Businessman Raj Kundra’s properties worth Rs 97 crore, including his wife Shilpa Shetty’s Juhu flat, has been seized by Enforcement Directorate (ED). The probe agency claimed that the attached properties bought by Kundra are POC in a cryptocurrency case probed by the ED.
The agency said that the attached assets include a residential flat in Mumbai and a residential bungalow in Pune belonging to Shilpa Shetty, and equity shares. The properties have been attacked under Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA), 2002.
The Mumbai Zonal Office has provisionally attached immovable and movable properties worth Rs. Rs. 97.79 crore. The ED initiated the investigation on the basis of multiple FIRs registered by the Maharashtra Police and Delhi Police against Variable Tech Pvt Ltd and the accused – late Amit Bhardwaj, Ajay Bhardwaj, Vivek Bhardwaj, Simpy Bhardwaj, Mahendra Bhardwaj and others.
In a statement, on Thursday, the federal probe agency said,“ED, Mumbai has provisionally attached immovable and movable properties worth Rs. 97.79 crore belonging to Ripu Sudan Kundra aka Raj Kundra under the provisions of PMLA, 2002. The attached properties include residential flat situated in Juhu presently in the name of Smt. Shilpa Shetty, residential bungalow situated in Pune and equity shares in the name of Raj Kundra.”
It is alleged that the accused had collected huge amounts of money (worth Rs 6,600 crore in 2017 itself) from people in the form of bitcoins by making false promises of 10 per cent per month returns in the form of bitcoins. The collected bitcoins were to be used for bitcoin mining and investors were to get huge returns in crypto assets.
But the promoters duped the investors and hid the wrongly obtained bitcoins in obscure online wallets. According to the ED investigation, Raj Kundra had received 285 bitcoins from Amit Bhardwaj, the mastermind and promoter of the Gainbitcoin ponzi scam, to set up a bitcoin mining farm in Ukraine. The said bitcoins were obtained from the proceeds of crime collected by Amit Bhardwaj from gullible investors.
