India’s Enforcement Directorate has frozen bank accounts of WazirX cryptocurrency exchange which is home to $8.14 million dollars or 64.67 crore rupees. Indian Income Tax team has published a long document on their portal where it says it has done search on one of directors of Zanmai Lab Pvt Ltd, the company behind WazirX crypto exchange.
Enforcement Directorate says it has started investigation against myriad Indian NBFC companies and their partners for performing lending practices that violate RBI guidelines and by make use of telecallers who often make use of abusive language to fetch high interest rates from those take loans.
Also, ED says various fintech companies, including WazirX are backed by Chinese funds that could not, otherwise get NBFC license from RBI, and they go the MoU route with defunct NBFCs to piggybank on their license. In case of WazirX, it was Binance who took over the operations. That said, Binance’s CEO, has made it clear that while Binance had intentions to take over WazirX, the transaction was never completed.
CZ from Binance adds that all Binance offers is its cryptocurrency wallet services for the WazirX users and it has no part in user sign up, KYC or for initiating withdrawals.
4/ Recent allegations about the operation of WazirX and how the platform is managed by Zanmai Labs are of deep concern to Binance. Binance collaborates with law enforcement agencies all around the world. We would be happy to work with ED in any way possible.
— CZ 🔶 Binance (@cz_binance) August 5, 2022
WazirX, on the hand, says they have been fully cooperating with Income Tax officials from past several days and have even responded to all of their queries in transparent manner.