India’s financial crime fighting agency said on Friday it has frozen the assets of WazirX, owned by the world’s largest digital currency exchange Binance, as part of its investigation into alleged violations of foreign exchange regulations, according to Reuters.
The federal Enforcement Directorate (ED) said it froze assets worth 646.7 million Indian rupees (about 55,163,500 yuan, $8.16 million).
WazirX did not immediately respond to a request seeking comment.
Cryptocurrency is a global cryptocurrency exchange that provides a trading platform for over 100 cryptocurrencies. since the beginning of 2018, Cryptocurrency is considered the largest cryptocurrency exchange in the world in terms of trading volume. The name “Binance” is based on the combination of the words binary and finance.
The agency said its action was linked to an investigation into the crypto exchange for allegedly assisting instant loan app companies to launder money by converting it into cryptocurrency on its platform.
Last year, the ED opened an investigation into WazirX, a subsidiary of Coinan, for allegedly violating foreign exchange regulations.
In 2021, ED is investigating a money laundering case involving an illegal online gambling app owned by Chinese nationals, and ED said that during the course of the investigation it discovered that about Rs 570 million worth of laundered proceeds were converted into cryptocurrencies through the Binance platform.
