Alt News Foreign Funding case: Payments platform Razorpay on Friday said fact-checking website Alt News could only accept domestic payments and foreign transactions were not allowed without FCRA.
Razorpay co-founder and chief executive officer (CEO) Harshil Mathur wrote on Twitter handle that their payments platform has shared “only specific data” with the investigating officers in the Alt News case under investigation.
The Delhi Police, after arresting Alt News co-founder Mohammad Zubair in a case, told a local court last week that it would investigate the alleged violation of the Foreign Contribution Regulation Act (FCRA) by the website.
Making the clarification, Razorpay co-founder and CEO Harshil Mathur took to Twitter and said the payment gateway had shared with investigating authorities ‘only specific data’ within the scope of the investigation.
“While I am not allowed to share the specifics owing to the ongoing investigation, I want to state that the concerned business was only enabled to receive domestic payments in-line with our policy to not allow international transactions without FCRA approval for donation pages,” he said, without directly naming Alt News.
He said that on Monday, Razorpay had received a written notice to share transaction data for a specific time period. Mathur said that after legal advice, it was decided to follow up with this notice along with the police. Therefore, we did not share the donor’s PAN, address, pin code, etc., which we believe were beyond the scope of investigation.
When Alt News said that they were not contacted before sharing the information, Mathur said Razorpay had contacted the registered mobile numbers associated with the business, but could not reach them. Mathur said that we understand that in such a situation it could have been difficult for him to talk on the phone.