Nepal Police have arrested a Chinese national and 34 others from a call centre in Tinkune, Kathmandu, which provides loans to Indian citizens at high interest rates.

The arrests were made on Monday during a raid on the Sky World Call Centre.. Police also seized a laptop, computer and some documents from the call centre, says a media report quoting the Kathmandu police.

China has invested in the call centre which is running for two years with a staff of 2,000 youth.

“”During the investigation, it was revealed that an organisation named Vaidya Organization is operating a call centre on leased premises. The centre provides loans to Indian citizens at high-interest rates using Chinese applications,” Kathmandu Police spokesperson Dineshraj Mainali said.

The house in which the call centre was being operated belonged to Suraj Vaidya, a former president of the Federation of Commerce and Industry.

The call centre provided loans to Indian citizens and the staff were also engaged in loan recovery.The Chinese apps used for lending have servers located in Macau, Hong Kong and China.The servers are off-line and this makes investigations into the case challenging for the police.

About the modus operndi, police said the Call Centre used to send messages about loans to the mobile phones of Indian citizens. “Once the loan is taken, the borower details are recorded in their Chinese apps. Any failure to repay invited threats of misusing personal data photos including”.

Investigations show that Chinese citizens or Chinese firms were involved in call centre scam. This business beside targetting Indian nationals through proxies is also used for money laundering, according to police.###