ED custody of three Vivo-India executives extended by one day

The ED custody of interim CEO of vivo-India Hong Xuquan, Chief Financial Officer Harinder Dahiya and consultant Hemant Munjal was extended.

A Delhi court on Friday extended the Enforcement Directorate (ED) custody of three vivo-India executives for one day. The accused were booked in a money laundering case against the Chinese smartphone maker.

The ED custody of interim CEO of vivo-India Hong Xuquan, Chief Financial Officer Harinder Dahiya and consultant Hemant Munjal was extended. The court has earlier given six days’ custody of the accused to the ED and they were produced before judge on the expiry of the same.

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The ED had sought further custody of the accused for four days but the court granted it only one day.

The agency had earlier arrested four persons — mobile company Lava International’s MD Hari Om Rai, Chinese national Guangwen alias Andrew Kuang, and chartered accountants Nitin Garg and Rajan Malik — in the case. They are in judicial custody.

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The investigative agency, in a 400-page charge sheet, alleged that vivo-India remitted almost 50% of the sale proceeds overseas, mainly to China, to disclose huge losses in several domestically incorporated companies to avoid payment of taxes in India.

The ED has initiated the money laundering case after taking cognisance of an FIR of the Delhi police’s Economic Offences Wing against a distributor of an agency based in Jammu and Kashmir where it was alleged that a few Chinese shareholders in that company forged their identity documents.