BOI issues Loc against Hungarian National After 3 Arrests
The Bureau of Immigration has issued a Look Out Circular (LOC) against David Gez, 32, a Hungarian national who was the CEO of STA (Solar Techno Alliance) Token, which was accused of committing a Rs 1,000 crore pan-India cryptocurrency fraud.
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Bhubaneswar: The Bureau of Immigration has issued a Look Out Circular (LOC) against David Gez, 32, a Hungarian national who was the CEO of STA (Solar Techno Alliance) Token, which was accused of committing a Rs 1,000 crore pan-India cryptocurrency fraud.
The circular was issued at the request of the Bhubaneswar Economic Offences Wing (EOW).
Gez visited India twice on a tourist visa in 2022-23, according to the EOW. During his 25-day stay, he visited Odisha, Goa, Punjab, Jharkhand, and Delhi, among other places.He had previously traveled to India via the United States, Turkey, and Poland.
Gez visited Bhubaneswar and Bhadrak in Odisha and engaged in business/promotion activity that is prohibited by Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) rules. "In addition to the legal action in the current case," the release stated, "EOW would report this fact to MEA for necessary action."
After the EOW filed a case, he deactivated his Instagram and Facebook accounts. However, his Indian associates are still posting YouTube videos with his AI-generated image and voice, according to the report.
Sources further said that STA Token was trying to relaunch the company with a new identity to lure investors even as EOW started the legal process to issue a lookout circular against Gez. The involvement of second foreigner, a Dutch national, in this scam is also under scrutiny.
Earlier, the EOW had arrested Gurtej Singh Sidhu and Nirod Das, who are the country and state heads of STA Token respectively, from Rajasthan and Bhadrak respectively on August 7. A Bhubaneswar-based investment advisor and financial consultant, Ratnakar Palai (45), who completed his MTech in Information Technology (IT) from Karnataka University, was nabbed on August 15.
The company is accused of operating a pyramid-structured Ponzi business and collecting around Rs 1,000 crore deposits from 2 lakh people across the country without having any authorisation from the Reserve Bank of India. People were lured on social media to invest in cryptocurrency by the firm, which offered an incentive to enrol more investors under them and build the networks.
