India’s Law Enforcement (ED) Directorate says it has frozen an additional 44.5 bitcoins as part of an ongoing money laundering investigation into electronic nuggets of mobile gaming apps. . The authority has already frozen nearly 86 bitcoins at crypto exchange Binance over the same investigation.
India’s Law Enforcement (ED) Directorate announced on Thursday that it has frozen 44.5 bitcoins under the country’s Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA). The ED is the law enforcement and economic intelligence agency of the Government of India.
The official ED Twitter account tweeted:
ED searched 2 premises in Kolkata and seized cash of Rs 1.65 Cr, frozen 44.5 bitcoins (equivalent to Rs 7.12 Cr) and other incriminating documents under the PMLA, as part of an ongoing investigation regarding the mobile game application, namely E-nuggets.
The authority explained, “Aamir Khan, s/o Nesar Ahmed Khan has launched a mobile gambling application namely E-Nuggets, which has been designed with the aim of defrauding the public… It has been revealed that several accounts (more of 300) were used to launder money.”
Prior to Thursday’s announcement, the ED has already frozen cryptocurrencies linked to its electronic nugget investigation several times.
On September 28, the ED said it froze 77.62710139 bitcoins on the Binance cryptocurrency exchange. The authority then froze more BTC. In its September 30 announcement, the ED said that a total of “85.91870554 bitcoins equivalent to USD 1674255.7 (equivalent to Rs 13.56 Cr approximately according to the market exchange rate) found in equilibrium in the Binance exchange have been frozen”. The ED also froze WRX (the utility token of Indian crypto exchange Wazirx) and stablecoin tether (USDT) equivalent to Rs 47.64 lakhs in Wazirx accounts linked to the E-nuggets affair.
The ED said on Thursday:
During the investigations conducted so far under the PMLA, an amount of Rs 51.16 Cr has been seized/frozen in total in this case.
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