As Hyderabad police continue their crackdown on app-based instant financing companies for allegedly harassing borrowers and even causing forced deaths, new evidence of involvement of Chinese firms has emerged.
Police say that they found several of these companies, most of them being operated from National Capital Region (Delhi), funded by China-based firms who hired locals as directors to run these companies and their illegal operations.
This development comes even as the Government of India and other countries decided to ban a raft of Chinese apps for security concerns.
Seventy apps
A few top police officers The Hindu spoke to said that they have identified at least 70 such apps on Google Play Store, whose operations are unlawful as per the guidelines of the Reserve Bank of India.
They said that all these apps were developed by a software development kit (SDK), which is suspected to be provided by a Chinese firm based in Beijing.
“Their operations are similar to the online gaming apps developed and run by some Chinese firms in India. A huge amount of money laundering is involved in these app-based loan providers,” a senior officer said on condition of anonymity.
He said that some Chinese firms through hawala and other illegal channels are pumping in money to the app companies, who in turn extend loans to prospective clients in the form of personal loans with higher interest rates.
“The China-funded loan companies which are operating from the NCR are hiring local call centre companies to recover the loan amount by harassing and humiliating the borrowers,” he said.
Another officer said that the call centre executives create WhatsApp groups in the name of borrowers calling them as ‘cheater, 420, chor, fraud’ and send fake legal notices and First Information Report to threaten and recover the loan amount.
Fake notices
“They send fake legal notices and FIRs stating that the company has already approached the police as he turned out to be a defaulter,” he said.
After questioning a few telecallers during the raids, the police found that the former were trained in intimidating the defaulters.
“They call the defaulters at least 50 to 100 times in a day to disturb his/her sanity with different numbers. They also call people on their contact lists, starting with women contacts,” he said.
