Delhi High Court unfreezes Vivo India’s bank accounts in alleged money laundering case

The Delhi High Court on Wednesday lifted a freeze on Vivo India’s bank accounts imposed by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) amid money laundering allegations. The court also ordered the Chinese smartphone maker to provide a bank guarantee of $119 million (Rs 945 crores approximately) in a bid to unfreeze its accounts.

It is worth noting that Vivo had moved the Delhi HC, earlier this month, after ED froze all its funds. The smartphone maker, in its filing to the court had said that freezing the accounts would prevent the company from paying statutory dues, salaries and rent. It would also make its day-to-day functioning impossible. Vivo had said that it would “not be able to pay statutory dues and salaries, listing 10 affected bank accounts and saying it needed to make monthly payments of 28.26 billion Indian rupees ($355 million).”

The company had also said that if the situation continued, all operations of the company would come to a complete standstill, which in turn would not only result in substantial commercial losses being suffered by the company, but it would will also prevent the company from paying a sum of Rs 451 to the exchequer as a part of various statutory dues, The Economic Times had reported.

While hearing Vivo‘s plea, earlier this month, the Delhi HC had granted ED until July 13 to respond to the company’s request and to decide on the company’s representation in the case. It had also set July 13 as the date for deciding its next hearing.

Now, the court has lifted the freeze on the company’s accounts while attaching conditions to it.

The development comes just days after, ED said that it had raided 48 location of Vivo India and 23 entities associated with it across the country as a part of its investigation into the alleged money laundering case while alleging that Vivo India had remitted almost 50 percent of its turnover in India, which is worth Rs 62,476 crore, to China in a bid to avoid paying taxes here. As a part of the probe, ED has seized 73 lakh cash and 2 kg gold bars. It has also frozen 119 bank accounts linked to Vivo’s India business.

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