Sequoia Capital’s Bangalore Office Raided By ED Over Aircel Maxis Scam

The Enforcement Directorate (ED) searched the Bangalore office of Singapore-based VC firm Sequoia Capital, late Monday night.

The search was done regarding the Aircel Maxis Scam.

Talking about the development, Mohandas Pai of Aarin Capital said that rather than conducting a raid at the Sequoia Capital office the ED should have issued a notice and asked for the information directly before proceeding for a raid.

Son of former Union home and finance Minister P Chidambaram, Karti Chidambaram is alleged to have used Vasan Healthcare to launder black money.

Sequoia Capital was an investor in Vasan Healthcare. Reports suggest that it had earlier subscribed INR 100-crore worth of Vasan Healthcare preference shares. Later it bought 30,000 shares of Vasan Healthcare at INR 7,500 per unit from Advantage Strategic Consulting for a whopping INR 22 Crore.

Karti Chidambaram was a director in Ausbridge Holdings, allegedly till 2012. And about 66 per cent shares in Advantage Strategic were earlier bought by Ausbridge Holdings.

These shares of Vasan Healthcare, sold to Sequoia for INR 7500 per unit, were allegedly acquired at a fairly low price. It is alleged that Advantage had acquired 1.5 lakh shares of Vasan Healthcare at throwaway price of INR 100 per unit. The ED is trying to verify these allegations and to determine how was such a low price per unit of share facilitated? This has put Advantage under the Enforcement Directorate scanner for suspected foreign exchange violations.

Sequoia Capital confirmed the reports in a series of tweets and said that it is fully complying with the investigation.

ED and CBI are probing the Aircel-Maxis deal. It is a part of the overall probe in the 2G scam case.

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