Rapido denies involvement in Rs 331-cr money trail in bike taxi driver's account

A mule account is used to funnel illicit funds generated from financial crimes, and the actual owner is not its user. Such accounts are created using fake or hired KYC, where someone lends their account in lieu of a commission.

The ED officials stumbled upon the Rapido bike driver while investigating the 1xbet online betting-linked money-laundering case.

Rapido said that it is providing the required information to the Enforcement Directorate.

"The individual mentioned is one of the two crore registered captains associated with us for bike taxi services. As with many workers in the gig economy, he may be associated with multiple platforms. Rapido has no role or involvement in the matter under investigation. The alleged actions are personal to the individual," a Rapido spokesperson said.

The company does not endorse or tolerate any such behaviour and remains committed to maintaining the highest standards of transparency, integrity, and compliance with the law.

Alarmed by the "suspicious" multi-crore-rupee transactions in a short period of eight months, the federal agency conducted a raid at the address provided in the driver's bank records.

The sleuths found that the driver lived in a two-room shanty in a modest Delhi locality and remained out of his house all day as he rode his bike to eke out a living.

What further attracted the ED's gaze was that a sum of more than Rs 1 crore, out of the over Rs 331 crore deposits, was used to pay the expenses of a "grand destination wedding" at a plush hotel in Rajasthan's lake city of Udaipur.

According to officials, the wedding is linked to a young politician from Gujarat who could be summoned for questioning soon.

The driver is understood to have told the ED investigators during his questioning that he neither knew anything about the bank transactions nor could he identify the bride, groom or their families whose wedding event in Udaipur was "funded" through his account.

The ED found that the account received "large" deposits from multiple unidentified sources, and these were "swiftly" rerouted to other suspicious accounts.

One of the sources of funds sent to this bank account is linked to illegal betting, the officials said.

The agency is now verifying the sources and destinations of the transactions that occurred on this account.

The agency had recently attached assets worth crores of rupees of former cricketers Shikhar Dhawan and Suresh Raina as part of the 1xbet probe, even as it questioned a number of other cricketers and celebrities.