ED seizes ‘biggest’ crypto fund worth Rs 1,646 crore in PMLA case
New Delhi, Feb 16: The Enforcement Directorate (ED) has seized its biggest-ever cryptocurrency worth Rs 1,646 crore as part of a “mega” money laundering investigation into a fraud investment scheme where numerous depositors were duped in the name of securities investment, official sources said.
The Ahmedabad office of the federal probe agency has also seized Rs 13.50 lakh in cash, an SUV and a number of digital devices after it concluded a fresh round of searches on Saturday in the case related to “fraudulent” and unregistered offering and sale of securities in the form of investments through ‘BitConnect lending program’.
The ED case, filed under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA), stems from an FIR of the Surat Police crime branch which said the alleged fraud that took place between November 2016 – January 2018 (after demonetisation).
The agency deployed a team of its tech-savvy experts who examined the “complex web” of transactions carried out in “numerous” crypto wallets to unmask the origin and controllers of these crypto wallets.