New Delhi: Amid the row over a Bitcoin-based ponzi ‘scam’ said to be used to fund the poll campaign for the Maharashtra elections, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) summoned Wednesday a cyber expert to appear immediately in connection with the probe into a ‘fraud’ estimated to be in excess of Rs 6,000 crore.
The residence of the cyber expert, Gaurav Mehta from Chhattisgarh’s Raipur, was searched upon by the teams of the Enforcement Directorate (ED) Wednesday morning after his name surfaced in the case after former IPS officer Ravindranath Patil accused Nationalist Congress Party (Sharadchandra Pawar) MP Supriya Sule and Maharashtra Congress chief Nana Patole of siphoning off money from the 2018 crypto scam to fund the assembly polls.
In his interviews Tuesday, Patil based his allegations on audio clips allegedly shared by Mehta, who was roped in by the Pune Police as part of the investigation against Patil and another cyber expert after investigators had arrested the duo for misappropriating crypto currencies.
The case that came on the radar of law enforcement agencies in 2018 became a huge talking point, with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) latching on to Patil’s allegations and launching attacks against Sule and the Congress party.
“There are four such audios of Supriya Sule… Today Supriya Sule is saying that this is AI generated, this is not my voice whereas her own brother (Ajit Pawar) is saying that this is her voice. So very clearly we can hear what instructions Supriya Sule is giving and not only Supriya Sule, you can also see Nana Patole how he is giving instructions to Amitabh Gupta, who is the commissioner,” BJP spokesperson Sambit Patra said in a press conference Tuesday.
On Wednesday, Sule rejected all the allegations made by Patil after casting her vote in Baramati. Pune Police Commissioner Amitesh Kumar confirmed to ThePrint about Sule filing an online complaint and further said that facts are being verified to check if a criminal case has to be lodged.
Six-year-old case
The bitcoin case embroiling political atmosphere in Maharashtra first came into light in January 2018 when Delhi and Maharashtra Police booked cases against Amit Bhardwaj, director of Singapore-based company Variable Tech Pvt Ltd, who later founded GainBitcoin promising investors 10 percent monthly return on Bitcoin investments for 18 months under multi-level marketing (MLM) schemes.
Such was the magnitude of his crypto currency investment avenue that he started his own chain of bitcoin mining operations, which GainBitcoin was also a part and had introduced possibly the first online retail marketplace accepting Bitcoin way back in 2014.
By 2018, Maharashtra and Delhi Police were in look out for him and he was arrested from the Delhi airport by Pune Police in April 2018.
The ED filed its Enforcement Case Information Report (a formal entry of the complaint) in April the same year. In the first prosecution complaint filed in June 2019, the ED had alleged that Amit Bharadwaj along with his brother Ajay Bharadwaj launched a ponzi scheme promising 10 percent return on every Bitcoin for a period of 18 months and amassed as many as 80,000 Bitcoins valued at Rs 6,606 crore as on November 2017.
In December last year, the ED later arrested Simpy Bhardwaj, wife of Ajay, though she got out on bail last month on the order of the Bombay High Court.
Amit died of cardiac arrest in 2022, while Ajay remains absconding.
Having busted a massive crypto currency fraud racket, the Pune Police in 2018 had roped in Pankaj Ghode of Global Blockchain Foundation, Pune and city-based retired IPS officer Ravindra Patil, who was at that time employed with the global auditing major KPMG, to help in collection of technical evidence and seizure of cryptocurrency.
But, four years later, on the complaint of KPMG, Ghode and Patil were arrested for allegedly transferring crypto currencies from wallets of Amit Bhardwaj to Patil’s own wallets by misusing the data shared by investigating officers.
Investigators later alleged that they were able to retrieve some 16 crypto currencies worth Rs. 6 crore from Patil’s wallet while he had also sold some currencies.
Now, Patil has alleged that Mehta, whose report formed the basis of criminal cases against him, shared audio clips alleging misappropriation of funds by Sule and Patole. Former Pune Police Commissioner Amitabh Gupta and Deputy Commissioner of Police Bhagyashree Navtake have also been dragged in the clips, it is learnt.
(Edited by Tony Rai)