The businessman Raj Kundra, husband of actor Shilpa Shetty, in connection with a money laundering probe related to a bitcoin transactions case, was summoned at the ED Mumbai, On June 5th and was termed as illegal by the Government.
There are some instances of the case that are linked to Kundra and hence, he has been asked to record his statement, the officials said without elaborating. It is said that about 8,000 investors lost about Rs 2,000 crore funds by transacting in this scheme for this reason ED had registered a criminal case under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) against bitcoin-based investment website GainBitcoin, its founder Amit Bhardwaj and eight others including Businessman Raj kundre who was being called and held for discussion for an hour in money laundering case.
Before it, Raj was allegedly involved in match fixing case earlier also and he himself admitted over it, which was reason his Team Rajasthan Royal could not get into the pitch for about 2 years.
Based on an FIR of the Maharashtra Police in this case and the Pune Police arrested Bhardwaj and his brother Vivek from Delhi earlier.
Bhardwaj reportedly was behind ventures like GainBitcoin, GBMiners, MCAP and GB21, and the investors were allegedly duped after transactions on these portals.
Last year, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley had informed Parliament that RBI has not given any licence to any entity/company to operate such virtual currencies.
The government warned investors to be cautious of virtual currencies such as bitcoin, saying they are like Ponzi schemes with no legal tender and protection. NES NES ANB ANB