Actress Shilpa Shetty and her husband, Raj Kundra, have approached the Bombay high court challenging the Enforcement Directorate’s eviction notices, seeking possession of their flats at Juhu in Bombay and bungalow at Lonavala. The matter was on October 9 kept for hearing today (October 10).
The ED is investigating Raj in a Rs. 6,600 crore Bitcoin-Ponzi scam case it had registered against Pune resident Amit Bhardwaj (now deceased), his brother, Ajay Bhardwaj, and others.
The Enforcement Directorate had provisionally attached the aforementioned properties earlier this year. The adjudication authority had last month confrirmed the attachment. Following this, the ED sent the couple eviction notices last month. Shilpa and Raj challenged the notices, stating that after the attachment confirmation order, they had 45 days to challenge it before the Appellate Tribunal. They added that the ED had issued them the eviction notice before the expiry of the 45-day period. The ED told the high court yesterday that the couple needed to approach the Tribunal rather than the court.
The ED alleged that Raj Kundra had received 285 bitcoins (worth Rs. 150 crore) from Amit Bhardwaj to set up a bitcoin mining farm in Ukraine. It also alleged that Kundra used the money to buy properties in India.
The ED initiated the money laundering investigation based on multiple FIRs registered by the police in Maharashtra and Delhi against Variable Tech Pte. Ltd., Amit Bhardwaj, Ajay Bhardwaj and others. Reportedly, the accused had collected huge amounts of funds in the form of bitcoins (worth Rs. 6,600 crore) in 2017 from the public with false promises of a 10% per month return. However, the promoters allegedly cheated investors and have been concealing the ill-gotten bitcoins in obscure online wallets.
Kundra had earlier told the ED that he provided consultancy services to Amit Bhardwaj for bitcoin mining. He explained that the Bhardwaj brothers, Amit and Ajay, had, through his bitcoin wallet transferred crypto currency into another wallet and he didn’t know the recipient.
Incidentally, Kundra sold his Juhu flats in Bombay, totally valued at Rs. 80 crore, to his actress-wife Shilpa Shetty for only Rs. 38 crore after the ED initiated a probe against him in the money laundering case.