The Delhi high court on Friday asked the Enforcement Directorate ( ED) to consider Vivo India’s representation for permitting it to use its frozen bank accounts while posting the hearing of the company’s plea for unfreezing them on Wednesday.
Advocate Zoheb Hossain, who represented ED, opposed Vivo’s plea against the freezing and told the court the petition is premature.
Vivo’s lawyer, Sidharth Luthra, told the court their functionality has been affected. “We have to pay tax. We have to pay TDS [Tax Deducted at Source]. We have to pay excise duties. There are 9,000 employees. There is an urgency. There is a liability that is growing every day,” said Luthra.
Earlier in the day, the matter was mentioned for urgent mentioning and chief justice Satish Chandra Sharma allowed it.
ED on Thursday said it searched 48 locations across the country belonging to Vivo Mobiles India Private Limited and its 23 associated companies such as Grand Prospect International Communication Private Limited (GPICPL).
Hossain told the court that ₹1400 crore came into the account of GPICPL, out of which at least ₹1,200 crore have gone into bank accounts of the mobile company. He said GPICPL was registered on the basis of forged and fake documents and its ex-director Bin Lou set up 18 companies across India.
ED on Thursday said Vivo was incorporated in August 2014 as a subsidiary of Multi Accord Ltd, a Hong Kong-based company, and was registered in Delhi. GPICPL was registered in December 2014 in Shimla with addresses of Solan (Himachal Pradesh) and Gandhinagar ( Jammu).
The ED said Zhengshen Ou, Bin Lou, and Zhang Jie incorporated GPICPL with the help of one Nitin Garg, a chartered accountant. Bin left India in 2018 while Zhengshen and Zhang in 2021.
ED cited its investigation and said Bin was also an ex-director of Vivo and incorporated multiple companies across the country. “…a total of 18 companies around the same time, just after the incorporation of Vivo in 2014-15…another Chinese National Zhixin Wei incorporated further 4 companies,” an ED statement said on Thursday. The ED said these companies transferred money to Vivo India.