India’s Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU) has investigated 3,300 crypto accounts between April and November 2022. These accounts were used for illegal activities between 2019 and 2021 and the total illegal transactions could be worth Rs. 28,000 crore (Approx. $3.5 billion), media reports said attributing the information to an unnamed FIU official.
Seventy percent of these accounts have been blocked and the process to block other accounts is continuing. Some of these accounts are on foreign exchanges and FIU is coordinating with foreign investigation agencies such as Interpol, Egmont, Eurasian Group, and Europol to get action initiated against those accounts.
These crypto accounts came under the FIU scanner for various illegal activities such as wildlife smuggling, drug trade, money laundering, and funding social unrest. FIU has shared the intelligence with other premier probe agencies including the Enforcement Directorate (ED), Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), and Income Tax (IT) Department for further investigations.
“Enforcement agencies have requested for closure of crypto accounts in cases where they were local and operating on India based crypto exchanges,” media reports quoted FIU sources as saying.
FIU is a wing of the Ministry of Finance and it works more as an intelligence-gathering agency. It passes on its inputs to other investigation agencies which work in the field. FIU receives reports from in-field investigation agencies in India and coordinates with international agencies for complete investigations into important cases.
