The economic offence wing of Odisha police has arrested Neerav Gupta, a chartered accountant (CA) for his alleged involvement in an illegal loan app case, police said on Tuesday.
Gupta, a resident of Gurugram, was arrested from Paschim Vihar, West police station area of New Delhi on July 30 this year.
After producing him before the court of chief metropolitan magistrate, Tis Hazari court, New Delhi, Gupta was brought to Bhubaneswar on transit remand, the EOW officials said.
The arrest was made on the basis of investigation carried out into an allegation of one Sakti Prasad Dash of Bhubaneswar regarding the harassment and mental torture by the recovery agents of the loan app Kredit Gold by sending him abusive messages and morphed photographs, etc.
According to police officials, Dash after downloading the loan app received the instant loan amount of Rs. 9,000 that was credited to his account. Only after four days, he received whatsApp messages/calls to pay back Rs. 15,627.
Thereafter, he received calls and messages from different mobile numbers which were traced to be the number of a company namely Good Start Business Pvt Ltd, the director of which is Nitin Malik, they said. The EOW has already arrested Nitin in this case.
CA Neerav Gupta has opened a lot of shell companies purposefully to be used by the Chinese nationals to facilitate the cash transaction relating to the digital lending apps. Gupta has received Rs. 30 lakh from the Chinese nationals for selling the shell companies to facilitate the business of loan apps, the EOW officials informed.
The accused was also not only registering the shell companies but also arranging the directors for the companies for a nominal salary, they added.
The international gang is running at least 10 such illegal loan apps and there are more than one lakh downloads of the Kredit Gold app alone.