Raj Kundra accepts supporting Amit Bhardwaj in good faith, more celebrities to face ED

Bollywood Actress Shilpa Shetty's husband and businessman, Raj Kundra, who was grilled by Enforcement Directorate (ED) officials in Mumbai for almost 10 hours, has made some startling revelation about the scam mastermind Amit Bhardwaj. 

Kundra said he had allotted Bhardwaj a team for supporting his project. "Amit Bharadwaj was interested in buying a team in our poker league. He wanted to pay in bitcoins which we refused. His contract was terminated after he failed to make the payments. I have become a witness for ED in the case," said Kundra after coming out of recording his statement in ED office.

According to ED, Kundra had promoted Bhardwaj's ponzy schemes and supported him arrange investors from outside India. Last year, Bhardwaj had organised a bitcoin event in Dubai, which was promoted by celebrities and attended by thousands of investors. ED suspected Kundra of making gains and traded in Bitcoin.

After Kundra, many other celebrities are on the radar of the ED and in coming days likely to be summoned by the agency. Among the high-profile celebrities whose names are linked up with the case are– Shilpa Shetty, Sunny Leone, Prachi Desai, Aarti Chabria, Sonal Chauhan, Karishma Tanna, Zareen Khan, Neha Dhupia, Huma Qureshi and Nargis Fakhri, said Zee news report.

In April this year Police arrested Bhardwaj and his brother Vivek Bhardwaj, who owned GainBitcoin and GB mining ventures, from Bangkok. The Pune Police had arrested seven accomplices of Bhardwaj in two alleged cheating cases.

They had floated many schemes and reportedly published advertisements in Media publications to push their schemes. Bhardwaj through his website assured a 10 per cent return on each bitcoin investment. About 8,000 investors lost around Rs 2,000 crore funds by transacting in this scheme.

The bitcoin master mind is also reported to have links with Pakistan intelligence agency ISI.