The ED is carrying out raids at the home of audit firm employee Gaurav Mehta in Raipur, Chhattisgarh, in relation to the “crypto funds for Maharashtra polls” scam involving NCP (SP) leader Supriya Sule and state Congress chief Nana Patole.
Gaurav Mehta gained attention when former IPS officer Ravindranath Patil identified him as a crucial witness in the 2018 cryptocurrency fraud case.
Gaurav Mehta, who works as a consultant at an audit firm, was helping the Pune police in their probe of the Rs 6,600 crore cryptocurrency fraud.
Patil also alleged that Supriya Sule and Nana Patole approached Mehta for cash from Bitcoins related to the scam for election purposes.
Patil claimed that Supriya Sule and state Congress leader Nana Patole embezzled bitcoins from the 2018 incident and utilized the money to manipulate the results of the Maharashtra Assembly elections in the current year.
Nevertheless, Supriya Sule, a leader from NCP (Sharad Pawar), rejected the accusations and stated that the voice in the audio clip presented by BJP MP Sudhanshu Trivedi is not hers. “Not my voice. All these voice notes and messages are fake,” Sule told reporters today.
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The accusations against Sule and Patole surfaced shortly after the opposition claimed that BJP general secretary in Maharashtra, Vinod Tawde, was implicated in a “cash for votes” scandal.
Patil claimed that Gaurav Mehta was the one who told him about the 2018 Bitcoin fraud investigation. Patil stated that Mehta claimed a hardware wallet with Bitcoin was taken during Amit Bharadwaj’s arrest by authorities. Nevertheless, it was reported that a different wallet was utilized, supposedly following instructions from Amitabh Gupta, the Pune Police Commissioner at that time.
The accusations against Sule and Patole surfaced shortly after the opposition claimed that BJP general secretary in Maharashtra, Vinod Tawde, was implicated in a “cash for votes” scandal.
