The 27-year-old Chinese national Zhu Wei alias Lambo, one of the key suspects in alleged financial irregularities by instant loan app companies cases, was of little help to the police as he did not reveal any information which was of substantial consequeneto unearth the multi-crore fraud and the real culprits.
Zhu Wei, who was granted five-day police custody by a local court on January 7, was remanded in judicial custody on Monday. Hailing from Jiangxi in China, he finished his engineering there and came to India on a business visa in January last. He was the overall head of operations of loan apps managed by four companies.
“Apart from his personal background, and how he applied for a job in key fugitive suspect Yuan Yuan alias Jennifer’s company, he did not say anything concrete,” an investigator told The Hindu .
The cyber experts managed to retrieve data from Zhu Wei’s personal laptop and they had enough technical evidence to prove his role in the ‘fraud’, the officer said.
However, another suspect K Nagaraju, who wa also granted police custody, told police about his role in the firms, and details about his other Chinese ‘bosses’ who were in constant touch with him through WeChat messaging app.
“Nagaraju opened 15 current accounts at various branches of ICICI Bank for different companies by taking authorisation letters from the directors,” the officer said quoting the suspect. Nagaraju also used his credit cards to make payment to Google for uploading a few instant loan mobile applications on their Playstore, he said. The suspect also informed police of the operations of a few companies in question.
The investigators have found 108 bank accounts were opened with ICICI Bank in Gurugram and other places in the National Capital Region.
The South-East Asia operations of ICICI are monitored from its Gachibowli office in the business district of Hyderabad.
“We have been pursuing with ICICI Bank to provide the details relating to persons involved in opening the current accounts, the companies and other entities involved. But, the concerned officials are passing the pillow from one department to another without yielding any result,” the officer said.
He said that they were unable to make any further progress in the cases, as the bank officials were delaying in providing account statements and other details.
On the other hand, the officials said that they are unable to get positive support from Google as it has provided a platform on its Playstore to these delinquent app companies. So far the Telangana police have identified over 350 loan apps, and wrote to Alphabet Inc. to remove them from the Playstore.
“They have removed only a handful of them, and the majority are still available for people on their platform. It is a cause of concern,” the officer said hoping to get a response from the giant search engine.
At least six people ended their lives due to the harassment by the app companies.
