Maharashtra polls: ED raids auditor named in bitcoin-for-votes case

Pune/Mumbai: The Enforcement Directorate (ED) on Wednesday conducted searches at the Raipur (Chhattisgarh)-based premises of an audit firm employee, Gaurav Mehta, as part of its on-going money-laundering investigation into an alleged scam involving a ₹6,606 crore bitcoin- based ponzi scheme operated by Singapore-based company Variable Tech Pte Ltd.

Mehta’s name had surfaced in audio tapes circulated on Tuesday night that sought to implicate NCP (SP) leader Supriya Sule and Congress’s Nana Patole in a scam to encash bitcoins for election-related expenses.

Experts have since debunked the audio tapes and called them AI-generated.

On Wednesday, both Patole and Supriya Sule denied that it was them on the tapes. Sule also sent a defamation notice to BJP spokesperson Sudhanshu Trivedi and former IPS officer Ravindranath Patil and lodged a formal complaint with the Election Commission.

A day prior to the Assembly elections in Maharashtra, former cop Patil told the media in Pune that former police commissioner of the city Amitabh Gupta and then deputy commissioner of police at Cyber cell, Bhagyashri Navtake, were involved in misappropriation of bitcoins in a case they were investigating and which were now being used by Sule and Patole for Maharashtra polls.

In 2018 a special investigative team of the Pune police’s Economic Offences Wing (EOW) investigated two of the several offences linked to a cryptocurrency Ponzi scheme registered in the country at the time. Among the 17 people arrested by the Pune police were the alleged masterminds and brothers Amit and Vivek Bharadwaj. They were charged with cheating thousands of people across India by promising high returns on cryptocurrency investments run by a network of companies. The Pune police pegged the amount linked to cases against Bharadwaj brothers and accomplices at 87,000 bitcoins. In April 2021, the Pune EOW sought the technical help of former IPS officer Ravindranath Patil and cyber-crime expert Pankaj Ghode in the case. However, Patil and Ghode, working with a top-ranked audit firm, allegedly used access to the case details to siphon off large sums of cryptocurrency from the wallets of those charged in two cases of multimillion-dollar Bitcoin Ponzi scheme, and were arrested by the Pune police then headed by Amitabh Gupta.

Patil who was released on bail subsequently told the media on Tuesday that he was

approached by a certain Gaurav Mehta, a witness in the case against him and Ghode saying that he had been approached by opposition leaders in Maharashtra to encash bitcoins to fund the polls. To substantiate his allegation, Patil shared 10 voice notes which had purported audio clips of Sule, Patole the two leaders are allegedly asking for money for elections from Gaurav Mehta. Within an hour or so of Patil’s allegations, BJP spokesperson Sudhanshu Trivedi held a press briefing in Delhi claiming that the development had “unmasked” the MVA.

Sule termed the BJP’s allegations as “familiar tactics” of spreading false information to manipulate voters the night before election. In response to the allegations against him Nana Patole said that he did not even understand what bitcoin was. “I am a farmer, and I don’t even understand bitcoin. That’s not my voice on the tape and we have served them a defamation notice.”

But after these fresh allegations the Central Bureau Investigation (CBI) on Wednesday summoned Gaurav Mehta to appear before its probe team in Delhi for questioning. The agency was directed by the Supreme Court on December 12 last year to take over the cases registered in connection with the alleged scam across several states in India.

The ED’s older probe is based on multiple cases registered by the Maharashtra and Delhi police against Variable Tech Pte Ltd and its promoters. It’s the ED’s case that the accused collected approximately ₹6,600 crore in the form of 80,000 bitcoins from the public, promising a 10% monthly return. However, the collected funds were then allegedly diverted through nine firms located abroad for purchasing overseas properties, and investors allegedly never received their returns.

Bitcoin is a convertible virtual currency but not a legal tender in India, and its mining refers to the method used by bitcoin and other crypto-currencies to produce new coins and to examine new transactions.

The accused had allegedly devised a computer software for mining of virtual /digital / crypto-currency bitcoin and made “Bitcoin Cloud Mining Contracts” with a number of gullible investors. Key accused Ajay Bhardwaj and Mahendra Bhardwaj remain at large in the case. The agency had previously attached properties worth ₹69 crore in the case and submitted a chargesheet in June 2019 and on February 14 of this year.