Vivo remitted ₹62,476 crore of its turnover out of India to avoid taxes: ED

Chinese mobile manufacturer Vivo India remitted about ₹62,476 crore – almost 50% of its turnover of ₹1,25,185 crore – out of India, mainly to China, the Enforcement Director says after it carried out searches at 48 locations across the country.

The probe agency has so far seized ₹465 crore including fixed deposits (FDs) to the tune of ₹66 crore of Vivo India, 2kg gold bars, and cash amount aggregating to around ₹73 lakh under the provisions of PMLA, 2002.

On Tuesday, ED carried out searches at 48 locations spanning across the country belonging to Vivo Mobiles India Pvt. Ltd. and its 23 associated companies such as Grand Prospect International Communication Pvt. Ltd. (GPICPL).

Vivo Mobiles India was incorporated in August 2014 as a subsidiary of Multi Accord Ltd, a Hong Kong based company and was registered at ROC Delhi. GPICPL was registered on December 3, 2014 at ROC Shimla, with registered addresses of Solan, Himachal Pradesh and Gandhi Nagar, Jammu.

GPICPL was incorporated by Zhengshen Ou, Bin Lou and Zhang Jie with the help of Nitin Garg. Bin Lou left India on April 26, 2018. Zhengshen Ou and Zhang Jie left India in 2021.

As per the FIR, GPICPL and its shareholders had used forged identification documents and falsified addresses at the time of incorporation. The allegations were found to be true as the investigation revealed that the addresses mentioned by the directors of GPICPL did not belong to them, but in fact it was a government building and house of a senior bureaucrat, says the probe agency.

ED's investigation revealed that the same director of GPICPL, namely Bin Lou, was also an ex-director of Vivo. He had incorporated multiple companies across the country spread across various states, a total of 18 companies around the same time, just after the incorporation of Vivo in the year 2014-15.

"These remittances were made in order to disclose huge losses in Indian incorporated companies to avoid payment of taxes in India," the Enforcement Directorate says.

The employees of Vivo India, including some Chinese Nationals did not cooperate with the search proceedings and had tried to abscond, remove and hide digital devices which were retrieved by the search teams, the probe agency adds.