Indian authorities freeze more crypto funds over money laundering allegations

India's Directorate of Enforcement (ED) reported Friday that it has frozen the monetary records of Bengaluru-based monetary services company Yellow Tune Technologies, some of which were held by Flipvolt crypto exchange, the Indian part of Singaporean Vauld. The move is connected to a continuous examination concerning money laundering by China-connected instant loan companies organizations. This is the second time this week that the agency has made a move in the crypto circle regarding that case.

The monetary guard reported it was freezing Yellow Tune's bank funds, and payment gateway. balances in the Flipvolt cryptocurrency exchange for a sum of 3.7 billion rupees, or $46.4 million after discovering that the company was a shell entity incorporated by two Chinese nationals using pseudonyms. As per newspaper accounts, the ED endured three days looking through premises related to Yellow Tunes.

The ED revealed 23 entities that had deposited assets into Yellow Tune's Flipvolt wallets that were additionally moved out of the country. The ED was forcefully complex in Flipvolt's handling of the assets. The organization said:

“Lax KYC [Know Your Customer] norms, loose regulatory control of allowing transfers to foreign wallets without asking any reason/declaration/KYC, non-recording of transactions on Blockchains to save costs, etc, has ensured that Flipvolt is not able to give any account for the missing crypto assets. It has made no sincere efforts to trace these crypto assets.”

Referring to India's Prevention of Money Laundering Act of 2002, the ED froze assets in Flipvolt's accounts identical to the sums it moved from Yellow Tune's wallets to unfamiliar wallets "till total asset trail is given by the crypto-exchange." The ED referred to those assets as "only returns of wrongdoing of crime derived from predatory lending practices."

The connection of the Flipvolt reserves is the ideal most recent terrible news for Vauld. The Singaporean exchange cut its staff by 30% in June and stopped withdrawals from its accounts toward the start of July. Sometime thereafter, it looked for security from its leasers in Singapore. It was conceded a three-month ban, which is like U.S. Part 11 bankruptcy.

It was reported earlier this week that the ED had frozen accounts holding $8.1 million of the assets of crypto exchange WazirX and was examining something like nine more exchanges with connections to Chinese- backed instant loan companies. The ED noted in its most recent communication that its examination of that case is continuous.

Related : Indian law enforcement accuses WazirX exchange of aiding in laundering of $130M