- Saturday, May 04, 2024
By: Shubham Ghosh
India’s Directorate of Enforcement (ED) has filed a prosecution complaint before a special court at Madurai in Tamil Nadu against Bluemax Capital Solution and its directors — R Aravinth, S Bharathraj, S Gopalakrishnan and others — under the Prevention of Money-laundering Act (PMLA), 2002, in a money-laundering case.
According to the agency, the case involved defrauding people by luring them to invest and trade in forex, commodities and gold by creating a fake website promising exorbitant returns.
The cognizance of the offence of money laundering has been taken by the Special Court (PMLA), Madurai. Investigation under PMLA revealed that the accused company designed a fake website and misled people into believing that they are trading in forex, gold and commodities in their accounts through the website. However, this was not the case and later this fake website was shut down and shown to viewers to be hacked, thereby claiming to have lost all the invested money and defrauding the investors.
Further investigations revealed that amount to the tune of Rs 116 crore (£11.6 million) was collected from the general public, part of this amount was diverted to various overseas entities in Hong Kong, UAE, Switzerland etc.
The agency said the siphoned-off money was layered and was utilised to invest in cryptocurrency and purchase movable and immovable properties by the directors. Subsequently, the ED has also seized movable assets in the form of cash, jewellery and cryptocurrencies to the tune of Rs 2.13 crore (£214,071) and frozen bank balances to the tune of Rs 3.24 crore (£325,629) during searches.
The directors of Bluemax Capital Solution alongwith J Amarnath, a close associate of the Directors were arrested on November 18, 2022. They are currently in judicial custody.
(ANI)
