Vivo PMLA case: ED arrests four persons in money laundering probe

The four were taken into custody under the provisions of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA)

The Enforcement Directorate (ED) has arrested four persons, including a Chinese citizen, a managing director and two others in connection with its money laundering probe against Chinese mobile maker Vivo, agency officials said on Tuesday.

The agency had raided the company and its linked persons in July last year. (Representative file image)

Those arrested include - Guangwen Kyang alias Andrew Kuang (a Chinese national), Hari Om Rai (managing director of Lava International), a chartered accountant Nitin Garg and another private person Rajan Malik.

The agency had on July 5 last year, raided Vivo Mobiles India Pvt Ltd and 23 firms linked to it.

At that time, ED said that a company associated with Vivo, GPICPL (M/s Grand Prospects International Communication Pvt. Ltd.) was registered December 3, 2014, at ROC Shimla, with registered addresses of Solan, Himachal Pradesh and Gandhinagar, Jammu. The said company was incorporated by Chinese citizens - Zhengshen Ou, Bin Lou and Zhang Jie with the help of Nitin Garg, CA. Bin Lou left India on April 26, 2018, while Zhengshen Ou and Zhang Jie left India in 2021.

“PMLA Investigation by ED was initiated based on a Delhi Police case register in 2021 against M/s Grand Prospect International Communication Private Limited (herein after referred as M/s 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,” ED said in a statement last year.