ED freezes Rs 370 crore of bank, crypto balances of Bengaluru ‘shell company’

economictimes.indiatimes.com:

ED) said on Friday it has attached assets worth Rs 370 crore belonging to a Bengaluru-based company linked to the instant loan apps case. The assets were parked in bank accounts, payment gateway balances, and wallets on the Flipvolt crypto exchange. Flipvolt is the Indian arm of Singaporean crypto lender Vauld.

The ED said it had conducted searches at several premises linked to the company, Yellow Tune Technologies Pvt. Ltd, over three days starting August 8. Vauld suspended all deposits and withdrawals on its platform in July, following the collapse of the TerraUSD stablecoin and its sister token Luna.

Later that month, Vauld signed an indicative term sheet to be fully acquired by Nexo, another crypto lender, pending due diligence. In July last year, Vauld raised $25 million led by PayPal founder Peter Thiel's Valar Ventures. Messages and emails sent to the exchange didn't elicit an immediate response.

The ED said its probe revealed Yellow Tune was a shell company with Chinese nationals on its board, and that funds to the tune of Rs 370 crore were deposited by 23 entities, including accused non-banking financial companies (NBFCs) and their fintech arms, into Yellow Tune’s Indian rupee wallets. “These amounts were nothing but proceeds of crime derived from predatory lending practices. Cryptocurrency so purchased was transferred to various unknown foreign wallet addresses,” the ED said in a statement.