The Congress on Monday said "unscrupulous" businessmen were using their "intimacy" with Prime Minister Narendra Modi to violate laws and rob the people while the Enforcement Directorate (ED) ignored such serious cases of fraud.

Arguing that the Paytm case had yet again exposed this nexus after the Adani affairs, Congress social media head Supriya Shrinate said: “People close to Modi are riding roughshod over the law and regulations. They get away because of their closeness with the Prime Minister. Why was Paytm Payments Bank given such a long rope? The reality that came to the fore is that there were all kinds of non-compliances from 2017. The money-laundering charge made against Paytm is very serious. What has the ED been doing about it?”

Shrinate added: “How much money has Paytm given to the BJP and to the PM CARES Fund? Why is it that everybody associated with Modi gets away without any investigation? Whether it is Adani or Vijay Shekhar Sharma, they can violate norms without attracting legal consequences. Paytm has a substantial share of digital payments. Can one put one’s hand on the heart to say that data has not been breached, data has not been leaked, to the BJP and to the Chinese partners?”

Explaining how "close" Vijay Shekhar Sharma — founder and chairman of One97 Communications, the parent company of Paytm — was to the Prime Minister, Shrinate said: “Let’s see these photographs; so many selfies with Modi (she showed four). On November 10, 2016, most newspapers carried full-page advertisements in which Paytm thanked Modi for taking the strong decision of note-bandi. Nobody can use the Prime Minister’s photograph in an advertisement without permission. Paytm gave 15 per cent cashback on tickets for Modi’s film. Modi himself advertised it at a public rally in Uttarakhand.”

Describing Sharma as a huge beneficiary of demonetisation, Shrinate said: “Paytm Payments Bank has now been banned by the Reserve Bank of India. But the trouble did not happen all of a sudden. The trouble had been going on for a while and the reality is that Paytm Payments Bank was found to be flouting rules, from the time it was conceptualised, from the time it got a banking licence. There are various things that the RBI found out. Around 35 crore Paytm bank wallets were probed, 31 crore of them were found to be non-operational. KYC was not done, questions of money laundering have arisen. The same PAN card was attached to thousands of accounts at the same time.”

She further said: “There was no compliance report and if submitted, misleading compliance reports were submitted by Paytm Payments Bank. The relationship between Paytm and Paytm Payments Bank and various group companies has come to the fore. So, these are very, very serious allegations including the one about money laundering. The reality also is that nothing concrete was done by the management as far as these irregularities were concerned.”