Enforcement Directorate (ED) on Tuesday, 5 July, raided around 44 premises in a money laundering probe against Chinese smartphone manufacturing company Vivo and other associated firms, officials told news agency PTI.
The searches, spanning across Delhi, Uttar Pradesh, Meghalaya, and Maharashtra among others, are being done under relevant sections of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA).
The central agency had filed a case following a First Information Report (FIR) registered by the economic offences wing of the Delhi Police.
The FIR was filed against a Vivo distributor based in Jammu and Kashmir, where it was alleged that a few Chinese shareholders had forged their identification documents, PTI reported.
According to the ED, the forgery was aimed at laundering funds through shell companies.
Further, some of these illegal proceeds were allegedly diverted abroad by skirting Indian tax and enforcement agencies.
As per a market research and analysis firm IDC, in the first financial quarter of 2022, Vivo held 15 percent market share in the Indian smartphone segment, becoming the top 5G brand in the Rs 10,000-20,000 price bracket in March 2022.
The ED Case Against Xiaomi
Last year, the ED had frozen Chinese company Xiaomi India's assets worth over Rs 5,551 crore ($725 million).
The agency had accused the Chinese smartphone maker of illegally transferring funds abroad. Xiaomi, in turn, said that its transactions are all "legit" and that it is cooperating with the investigation.
However, things took an ugly turn when Xiaomi alleged that its top executives faced threats of "physical violence" and coercion during questioning by the ED, according to a court filing seen by Reuters.
(With inputs from PTI.)
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