Looks like crypto in India are on the next phase as the country’s Ministry of Corporate Affairs (MCA) has conducted an inspection on companies operating within India.
The report comes in a wake of the filing that was submitted in the Lok Sabha, the lower house of Indian parliament. Per the statement, the investigation was conducted to analyze the fraudulent practices by bitcoin companies and eventually named “Zebpay and Unocoin” in the filing.
The statement was filed by the parliamentarian Mohammed Faizal which was then responded by Anurag Thakur, the Minister of State for Finance and Corporate Affairs. Mr.Faizal raised three key concerns including,
- If regulators are aware of the ‘cheating and fraudulent practices by bitcoin companies’,
- If ’crypto companies are repeatedly violating rules laid out by the corporate Affairs Ministry by not filling annual balance sheets
- If an action was taken against offending bitcoin companies
As a result, Minster Anurag Thakur noted that Unocoin and Zebpay are the two crypto companies that are registered with the registrar of companies in India – while the former is registered as ‘Unocoin Technologies Private Limited’, latter registered as ‘Zeb IT Services’. In a filing, Minister Thakur responded that;
Based on the findings, prosecutions have been filed for violations under various provisions of the Companies Act and the same also have been concluded on payment of penalty on the compounding application(s) filed by the company.
However, he also stated that the Zeb IT Services has filed the balance sheet along with annual return as of March 31, 2019, continuing that the company is currently under liquidation. On the other hand, Unocoin Technologies Private Limited is registered with the Registrar of Companies in Karnataka, the state in India. As per Minister Anurag Thakur, this ‘bitcoin company’ is ‘up to date in filing statutory returns and no complaint has been received”.
He added that the company has been registered in India to conduct buy, sell, store and accept bitcoins’. However, following this update, Unocoin co-founder and CEO, Sathvik Vishwanath took to Twitter and said: “a proud moment and glad that we are up to date without any complaints”.
The crux of the matter is that India is the home for several other crypto exchanges but many such companies are registered outside of India. More so, the company which appeared to be ‘in a liquidation’ has recently relaunched in India with new management and nothing has been officially revealed by the Zebpay crypto exchange yet.
