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The Supreme Court on Wednesday ordered that all FIR filed in relation to the Bitcoin scam should be consolidated, transferred them to the CBI for further investigation and directed that a trial be held in Rouse Avenue Court, Delhi.
The order was passed by a bench of Chief Justice of India DY Chandrachud and Justices J. B. Pardiwala and Manoj Misra. The court's direction came while dealing with the bail pleas of various accused in the matter. Earlier, the Supreme Court sought to know whether bitcoins were illegal in the country or not while hearing a matter relating to the GainBitcoin scam. The Court orally enquired the Central government about whether bitcoins were illegal or not. The court inquiry had come while hearing the petition seeking cancellation of bail against Ajay Bhardwaj, one of the co-accused among others in this case. ED has lodged a money laundering case against Ajay Bhardwaj and others under the provisions of PMLA, 2002, on the basis of two FIRs, one at Pune and the other at Nanded. ED said that the investigation done so far has revealed that M/s Variabletech Private Limited, Singapore, its directors, i.e., Amit Bhardwaj, along with brother Ajay Bhardwaj, Vivek Bhandwaj and father Mahendra Bhardwaj, hatched a criminal conspiracy in connivance with other accused persons to cheat the general public at large through its website, www.gainbitcoin.com. It was projected by the accused that M/s Variabletech Private Limited, Singapore, is involved in block chain and crypto currency mining technology and has a mining farm in China and the company, through its cloud mining service provider, Gainbitcoin.com, acquires the cloud mining hash power from large vendors by paying them in the form of Bitcoin. It was further projected that people could purchase a small part of cloud mining space (Hash Value) for 18 months through a contract made with M/s Variabletech Private Limited and get an assured return of 10% per bitcoin for 18 months, ED said. The investigation conducted so far has revealed that the petitioners, with the connivance of others, i.e., multi-level marketing agents and associates, have collected 80000 bitcoins (whose value is approx. Rs 20,000 crores as of today) as proceeds of crime. Amit Bhardwaj, the alleged mastermind behind the GainBitcoin scam, was arrested in March 2018 and later granted bail by the Supreme Court on April 3, 2019. ED had also sought to cancel Amit Bhardwaj's bail plea. (ANI)
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