India’s Enforcement Directorate (ED) has frozen crypto exchange Vauld’s crypto and bank assets worth about INR 370 crore ($46,439,181). Vauld halted deposits and withdrawals last month. The Indian law enforcement agency is reportedly investigating more than 10 cryptocurrency exchanges.
Indian Authority Freezes Another Cryptocurrency Exchange’s Assets
The Enforcement Directorate (ED), a law enforcement and economic intelligence agency of the government of India, has frozen the assets of another cryptocurrency exchange.
The agency announced Friday that it has conducted searches at various premises of Yellow Tune Technologies in Bangalore and has issued an order to freeze its bank balances, payment gateway balances, and crypto balances of Flipvolt Technologies’ crypto exchange totaling 370 crore rupees ($46,439,181) worth of assets. Flipvolt Technologies is the India-registered entity of Singapore-headquartered Vauld, a cryptocurrency trading, borrowing, and lending platform.
ED explained that approximately 370 crore rupees were deposited by 23 entities into the INR wallets of Yellow Tune Technologies held with Flipvolt Technologies’ crypto exchange. These amounts were “proceeds of crime derived from predatory lending practices,” the authority said, elaborating:
Yellow Tune by using the assistance of Flipvolt crypto exchange … assisted the accused fintech companies in avoiding regular banking channels, and managed to easily take out all the fraud money in the form of crypto assets.
The agency alleged that Flipvolt “has very lax KYC [know-your-customer] norms, no EDD [enhanced due diligence] mechanism, no check on the source of funds of the depositor, no mechanism of raising STRs [suspicious transaction reports].”
In addition, Flipvolt failed to give the complete trail of crypto transactions made by Yellow Tune Technologies and could not supply any form of KYC of the opposite party wallets, ED noted.
The authority concluded that “by encouraging obscurity and having lax AML [anti-money laundering] norms,” the crypto exchange “has actively assisted Yellow Tune in laundering the proceeds of crime worth 370 crore rupees using cryptocurrency,” adding:
Therefore, equivalent movable assets to the extent of Rs 367.67 crore lying with Flipvolt crypto exchange in the form of bank and payment gateway balances worth Rs 164.4 crore and crypto assets lying in their pool accounts worth Rs 203.26 crore are frozen under PMLA, 2002, till…
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