Mumbai:- A special court in Mumbai has granted bail to businessman Raj Kundra in a money laundering case related to a Bitcoin scam. PMLA court judge RB Rote had issued summons to Kundra after taking cognizance of the chargesheet filed by the Enforcement Directorate, after which he appeared in the court on Friday.
Kundra's lawyer Prashant Patil argued that his client has been fully cooperating in the investigation since 2021 and all the documents are already with the agency, so there is no need for custody.
The ED alleges that Raj Kundra received 285 Bitcoins, currently worth over Rs 150 crore, from Amit Bhardwaj, the mastermind of the 'Gain Bitcoin Ponzi Scheme', to set up a mining farm in Ukraine. Although Kundra had described himself as just a middleman, the ED claimed that Kundra's ability to remember the exact number of Bitcoins even after seven years of the transaction proved that he was the real owner. The agency also alleged that Kundra had deliberately tried to erase evidence of the digital wallet by using the excuse that his iPhone-X was broken.