The Enforcement Directorate (ED) has registered a fresh case against Noida ponzi scheme accused Anubhav Mittal for allegedly misleading his investors that with the claim that his company was “ISO-certified”. “A fresh case has been registered on the basis of new facts arising out of the investigation conducted by Enforcement Directorate under the provisions of Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA), 2002 against social trade business mastermind Anubhav Mittal and his associates,” the ED said in an official statement. The ED is already probing a case of money laundering against Mittal for allegedly duping his investors of Rs 3,700 crore after promising money in lieu of “likes” on social media. “He (Mittal) is alleged to have misused forged/expired ISO certificates for portraying the business of his company as genuine before the public as well as government agencies,” the statement said. It said the agency has moved a fresh application in a competent court seeking permission to interrogate Mittal and others in the “light of new facts”. The ED had, in March, attached assets worth Rs 599 crore in connection with the case after it registered its first ECIR based on an FIR registered by the Uttar Pradesh Special Task Force (STF). The agency will soon record the statement of Mittal’s father, Sunil Mittal, who is lodged in Luksar jail in Greater Noida. Mittal, the agency had earlier said, had collected “several thousand crore of rupees from the customers of his company by false inducements and later siphoned off the same by means of generating false or bogus bills/invoices with the assistance of various persons who are under scrutiny”. The ED’s zonal office in Lucknow had on January 5 registered a criminal case under the PMLA based on UP Police’s STF, which had first unearthed the alleged illegal ponzi or multi-level marketing scam. Describing the modus operandi used by the accused to perpetrate the ponzi scam, the ED had said an analysis of the bank statements of the companies involved reveals a “phenomenal increase” in the number of transactions since March 2016 and during a period of around one month a “turnover of more than Rs 40 crore was achieved”. The central probe agency had said the fraudsters allegedly cheated about 6.5 lakh gullible investors of an estimated Rs 3,700 crore.
