Blitz Bureau
NEW DELHI: “Syphoning off” Rs 70,000 crore from India under the “garb of imports”, controlling Vivo India from Room 901 in a Hong Kong building — these are among the several allegations in a chargesheet filed by the Enforcement Directorate against Chinese company Vivo.
“Vivo China controlled and monopolised all the operations of Vivo Mobiles in India through Vivo India and its 23 SDCs (state distributor companies),” alleged the supplementary chargesheet filed by the agency.
According to the central probe agency, Vivo Mobile India Pvt Ltd remitted Rs 70,837 crore outside India since 2014. Under the “garb of payments for imports of goods”, huge amounts were syphoned off to their overseas trading companies by Vivo Mobile India Pvt Ltd, as per the agency. These imports were allegedly from entities based in Hong Kong, Samoa and British Virgin Islands and many of these overseas “trading companies” were controlled by Vivo China, alleged the ED which also said that the proceeds of crime in this case were close to RSS 20,241 crore.
As per the ED, Vivo China used an Indian company named Labquest Engineering Pvt Ltd as a “front to carry out retail business activities” which were not permitted to be carried out through 100% FDI under the automatic route as per India’s FDI policy.
