The Karnataka BJP on Saturday rubbished AICC general secretary Randeep Singh Surjewala's claims of a Bitcoin scam in the state.
In a statement, BJP chief spokesperson Capt Ganesh Karnik said there was no such scam. “There has been absolutely no scam of whatsoever nature or dimension it could be. Therefore any questions of having any actors in this scam is a perverted imagination..." he said.
Karnik's statement bore an uncanny resemblance with the one issued by Bengaluru Police Commissioner Kamal Pant.
"No Bitcoins were transferred from hacker Srikrishna's account," Karnik specified.
While for the purpose of investigation and with the permission of the Court, the police wanted to initially transfer Bitcoins to the police wallet account, such a situation did not arise at all later, Karnik said. This was because a wallet with 186.81 Bitcoins, which Srikrishna claimed was his personal account, turned out to be a live wallet belonging to an exchange. "The accused did not have a private key for this. Hence, the account was left untouched and no Bitcoins were transferred to the police wallet," Karnik said.
As for Sriki's connection to the Bitfinix hack, he said representatives of Bitfinex company had neither shared any details of the alleged hack nor sought any information so far. "Till date, no foreign law enforcement agencies nor any foreign companies have approached the Bangalore Police about any hacking, as claimed by the accused," Karnik said.
Meanwhile, Sriki had made several claims of hacking websites. However, preliminary investigation revealed that majority of his claims were unsubstantiated. Nevertheless, since he had claimed that he had hacked many crypto currency websites, the matter was informed to the CBI Interpol on April 28, 2021, to alert the concerned countries. The same information was shared with the Enforcement Directorate, he added.
Karnik sought to clarify that the entire investigation was done by the police in a transparent manner. "At no stage, Home Minister or any other politician was connected with the investigation."
Police chief clarifies
In a separate statement, Bengaluru Police Commissioner Kamal Pant said his men "acted in a very transparent manner involving outside domain experts and appropriately recording all the proceedings, which were submitted to the Court." Pant further said: "It is to firmly reiterate that at no stage, anything was done which could jeopardise fair investigation and process of law. Investigation was done by a team of professional officers under close supervision and in continuous consultation and presence of reputed external experts, without any external influence or interference."
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