ED freezes Vauld’s bank assets worth Rs 370 crore in money laundering probe

moneycontrol.com:

In another instance of never ending trouble for crypto lending platform Vauld, the Enforcement Directorate (ED) on Friday said that it is freezing bank balances, payment gateway balances and crypto balances of worth Rs 370 crore for allegedly assisting predatory lending apps under ED’s investigation at present.

Payment gateway balances worth Rs 164.4 Crore and Crypto assets lying in their pool accounts were worth Rs 203.26 Crore.

ED had conducted searches at various premises of M/s Yellow Tune Technologies Private Limited at Bangalore, and the assets frozen belongs to Flipvolt Crypto-currency exchange, which runs Vauld.

The move comes exactly a week after WazirX’s bank assets worth Rs. 64.67 crore were halted last Friday in the same case.

“After the criminal investigation began, many of these fintech apps have shut shop & diverted away the huge profits earned using the above modus operandi. While doing fund trail investigation, ED found that large amount of funds to the tune of Rs 370 Crore were deposited by 23 entities including accused NBFCs and their fintech companies into the INR wallets of M/s Yellow Tune Technologies Private Limited held with Crypto Exchange M/s Flipvolt Technologies Private Limited. These amounts were nothing but proceeds of crime derived from predatory lending practices,” ED stated in its statement.

Crypto currency so purchased was transferred to various unknown foreign wallet addresses, it said.

On searching various premises of M/s Yellow Tune Technologies Private Limited between August 8, 2022 to August 10, 2022, beneficial owners of this firm and the recipient wallets couldn’t be traced.

“It is found that this shell entity was incorporated by Chinese Nationals Alex and Kaidi (real name not known)