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Nigeria-based mobile payments giant, OPay, is currently embroiled in an ongoing money-laundering investigation in India.
On August 26, the Indian police seized Rs 107 crore ($14 million) belonging to PC Financial Services Limited (PCFS), a private loan company that provides instant microloans in India through a mobile app, CashBean.
PCFS is accused of remitting Rs 429 crore ($58.7 million) to 13 of its other related companies, including OPay, for non-existent marketing and digital software services.
Chinese billionaire Yahui Zhou bought PCFS in 2018 through Opera Limited, a Norwegian company based in the Cayman Islands, which is the parent company of OPay in Nigeria as well as OPesa and OKash in Kenya.
India’s Enforcement Directorate (ED) in a statement said it found that “exorbitant payments were blindly allowed by the dummy Indian directors of PCFS, without any due diligence.”
The investigation revealed that all of the payments to foreign companies related to or owned by the Chinese who run the Opera group were made on the instructions of PCFS country head, Zhang Hong, who directly reports to Zhou.
“PCFS management failed to give any justification for these expenses and admitted that all remittances were done to move money out of India and to park it abroad in the accounts of group companies controlled by the Chinese promoter,” Indian authorities said.
PCFS, through CashBean, is also accused of abusive short-term lending practices, including illegal use of the personal data of customers, by threatening and abusing them through call centers, as well as extorting clients for higher interest rates.
The misuse of personal data and breach of privacy by quick-loan mobile apps seems to be a global trend.
In what is expected to be the first of many, Nigeria’s tech regulator recently fined microloan platform SokoLoan ₦10 million ($18,870) for invasion of privacy after being found guilty of illegally tampering with users’ private data.
Opera faced and denied a similar accusation earlier this year. In January, the Chinese company was accused of providing “predatory” loans in Nigeria and Kenya by a short seller, Hindenburg Research.
The PCFS scandal involving OPay emerged less than a week after the startup announced a $400 million fundraising, which saw it become Africa’s latest unicorn.
Amid the glee that comes with a $2 billion valuation, OPay is facing a credibility crisis of its own in Nigeria over unauthorised debits from the accounts of its customers.
In a statement issued August 27, OPay’s Country Manager in Nigeria, Iniabasi Akpan, revealed that the company “received complaints from some of its customers who might have recently exposed their personal or confidential information, unsuspectingly to fraudsters.”
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