The Indian cryptocurrency exchange WazirX announced on Monday that the Enforcement Directorate (ED) of India had unfrozen its bank accounts after barring suspicious accounts as a result of the exchange's "active collaboration" and "aggressive anti-money laundering" procedures.
In August of this year, the Enforcement Directorate had filed orders to freeze bank deposits belonging to the cryptocurrency exchange WazirX worth 64.67 crore. At the time, the ED was looking into suspicions of money laundering and a number of fraudulent loan applications that were allegedly backed by Chinese sources.
In a blog post on Monday, WazirX claimed that its platform was utilised by some of the 16 fintech firms and fast loan applications that the ED was looking at. Following an internal investigation, WazirX claimed to have warned and blocked the accounts the ED wanted to look into as early as 2020 and 2021.
The company also stated that it is not affiliated with any of the suspected accused Fintech and Instant Loan App entities that appear to be the focus of the ED investigation and that it is performing the KYC/AML checks despite being under no obligation to do so. WazirX is comparable to any other middleman whose platform may have been abused, according to the blog post from the business.
In a different occurrence, WazirX was given a show-cause notice under the Foreign Exchange Management Act (FEMA), according to Minister of State for Finance Pankaj Chaudhary. This occurred as a result of claims that WazirX had permitted cryptocurrency payments of Rs 2,790 crore to unidentified places.
Chaudhary asserted that WazirX was facilitating non-blockchain transactions between itself and the global cryptocurrency exchange Binance.
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