ED probing foreign link to ₹3,558-crore 'cloud storage' scam

New Delhi: The Enforcement Directorate (ED) is investigating if there's a foreign link to a multi-thousand crore fraud allegedly committed by an IT company headquartered in Noida. The agency has thus far identified proceeds of crime to be ₹3,558 crore, generated by Vuenow Marketing Services Ltd (VMSL) and its entities.

In a breakthrough, the federal agency Saturday arrested Sukhvinder Singh Kharour, CEO of the company, and his wife Dimple Kharour. The agency said that the duo was trying to fly out of India, however an active look out circular (opened against them at the behest of the agency) helped detain the duo at the Indira Gandhi International Airport after the Bureau of Immigration tipped off the federal agency sleuths.

Interestingly, Sukhvinder claimed before the court that he and his wife were arrested from Nepal at 8 am on February 28. The court found Sukhvinder's claim "devoid of any merit" and granted ED ten days of custodial interrogation.

"The accused has not shown any document on record from where even inference can be drawn that he was arrested from Nepal, and thus on the bald allegation of the accused, it cannot be held that the accused has been arrested from Nepal," a special PMLA court in Jalandhar ruled on Saturday. The court further said the arrest was "fully justified and is in accordance with the constitutional provisions".

The agency sought Sukhvinder's custodial interrogation to "ascertain the trail of money laundered as proceeds of crime and to identify the properties (immovable/movable) acquired from proceeds of crime by Sukhvinder and the involvement of other associates in laundering of proceeds of crime and to ascertain if any foreign linkages of the large-scale fraud and diversion of proceeds of crime", reads the court order.

On the other hand, ED sought Dimple's custodial interrogation on the ground that proceeds of crime "is to be recovered which has been diverted by her to some other areas in the shape of black money". The court granted ED five days' custody.

Modus Operandi
VMSL, under its "MyCloudParticle" brand, offered customers an investment opportunity by which the investors were induced to buy data centre asset, or cloud particle servers, through a sale and lease back model. Per the model, a customer would buy a cloud particle, which is a storage space in cloud, and the same would then be leased back for a term of ten years to ZRPPL and ZIPL, which are marketing affiliates of VMSL. In response, the buyers were offered minimum guaranteed rent for ten years. Each cloud particle comprises one TB of cloud storage space.