The Executive Directorate (ED) of India announced that it has unfrozen the bank accounts of cryptocurrency exchange Wazirx. The accounts were frozen as part of the federal agency’s investigation into 16 fintech companies and instant loan apps.
Wazirx Says Its Bank Accounts Are Now Unfrozen
(Wazirx Says Its Bank Accounts Are Now Unfrozen
Indian cryptocurrency exchange Wazirx announced Monday that the Indian government’s law enforcement and economic intelligence agency, the Executive Directorate (ED) announced that its bank accounts have been unfrozen.
The company explained that the ED has been investigating 16 fintech companies and instant loan apps, while Wazirx stressed that it has “no connection with the allegedly accused fintech and instant loan app entities that appear to be the subject of the ED’s investigation,” while crypto Exchange acknowledged that some of these entities “happened to use the Wazirx platform.”
The Indian crypto exchange stressed that it has been cooperating with the investigation by providing investigators with “all necessary details, information and documents of the alleged accused companies” that used its platform.
“Due to the active cooperation extended by Wazirx and the proactive anti-money laundering (AML) checks that led to the blocking of suspicious accounts, the ED has unfrozen Wazirx’s bank accounts,” the crypto exchange elaborated.
Wazirx is now in a position to continue banking operations as usual.
The ED announced in early August that it had frozen Wazirx’s bank assets. The agency explained that the action was part of a money laundering investigation against non-banking financial companies (NBFCs) and their fintech partners for “predatory lending practices” in violation of Reserve Bank of India (RBI) guidelines.
Wazirx further revealed on Monday that an in-depth internal investigation revealed.
Most of the users whose information was requested by ED were already deemed suspicious within Wazirx and were blocked from 2020 to 2021.
Following Wazirx, the ED froze $46 million worth of crypto and banking assets of Vauld, a Peter Thiel-backed crypto platform; in August, it investigated crypto exchange Coinswitch Kuber, which was found to have been the only crypto exchange in the world that had been blocked by the ED. However, the exchange’s CEO said it had nothing to do with the money laundering investigation.
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