On Friday, Senior Attorney Siddharth Luthra brought up the situation before the Delhi High Court bench, which also included Justice Subramonium Prasad and Chief Justice Satish Chandra Sharma. He said that the ED had blocked all of our bank accounts.
“We have 9000 employees. There is a liability,” Luthra said.
The bench agreed to hear the case today in an urgent manner.
In its argument, Vivo India said that the Respondent’s (ED) actions will seriously damage the company and harm both its reputation and business operations.
The plea claimed that the freezing of the bank accounts will have a negative impact on the petitioner’s operations both in India and around the world in addition to impeding any current or future business operations of the petitioner conducted through the bank accounts.
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“If amounts in the Petitioner’s Bank Accounts remain frozen, it would not be able to pay its statutory dues to the competent authorities under various enactments, leading to the Petitioner, being in further violation of law. The freezing also prevents the payment of salaries to the thousands of employees of the Petitioner.”
According to the ED, Vivo India’s nearly 23 associated firms such as Grand Prospect International Communication Pvt Ltd (GPICPL) transferred huge amounts to the firm and out of the total sale proceeds of Rs 1,25,185 crores, it remitted Rs 62,476 crores almost 50 per cent of the turnover out of India, mainly to China.
The agency said these entities are Rui Chuang Technologies Private Limited (Ahmedabad), V Dream Technology and Communication Private Ltd (Hyderabad), Regenvo Mobile Private Limited (Lucknow), Fangs Technology Private Limited (Chennai), Weiwo Communication Private Limited (Bangalore), Bubugao Communication Private Limited (Jaipur), Haicheng Mobile (India) Private Limited (New Delhi), Joinmay Mumbai Electronics Pvt. Ltd (Mumbai), Yingjia Communication Private Limited (Kolkata), Jie Lian Mobile India Pvt. Ltd. (Indore), Vigour Mobile India Private Limited (Gurgaon), Hisoa Electronic Private Limited (Pune), Haijin Trade India Private Limited (Kochi), Rongsheng Mobile India Private Limited (Guwahati), Morefun Communication Private Limited (Patna), Aohua Mobile India Private Limited (Raipur), Pioneer Mobile Private Limited (Bhubhaneswar), Unimay Electronic Private Limited (Nagpur), Junwei Electronic Private Limited (Aurangabad), Huijin Electronic India Private Limited (Ranchi), MGM Sales Private Limited (Dehradun) and Joinmay Electronic Pvt Ltd (Mumbai).
“These companies are found to have transferred huge amounts of funds to Vivo India. Further, out of the total sale proceeds of Rs 1,25,185 crores, Vivo India remitted Rs 62,476 crores almost 50 per cent of the turnover out of India, mainly to China,” ED said in a statement.
These payments were made in order to reveal significant losses in Indian-incorporated businesses and avoid paying taxes there.
The information was made public by the ED in a statement following a search at 48 locations throughout the nation that belonged to Vivo Mobiles India Private Limited and its 23 related businesses, including GPICPL.
According to ED, Multi Accord Ltd, a Hong Kong-based business, established Vivo Mobiles India Pvt Ltd on August 1, 2014, and it was registered with the Delhi Registrar of Companies.
Additionally, it stated that GPICPL was registered on December 3, 2014, at the Registrar of Companies in Shimla, with registered addresses in Gandhi Nagar, Jammu, and Solan, Himachal Pradesh.
Zhengshen Ou, Bin Lou, and Zhang Jie incorporated the business with the aid of Chartered Accountant Nitin Garg.
“Bin Lou left India on April 26, 2018. Zhengshen Ou and Zhang Jie left India in 2021.”
During raids, the ED said, due procedures as per law were followed at each premise but “the employees of Vivo India, including some Chinese Nationals, did not cooperate with the search proceedings and had tried to abscond, remove and hide digital devices which were retrieved by the search teams”.
According to the ED, 119 bank accounts belonging to various entities have so far had cash amounts totaling roughly Rs 73 lakhs and fixed deposits worth 66 crores from Vivo India as well as 2 kg gold bars and a gross balance of Rs 465 crores seized under the terms of PMLA, 2002.
