These 23 entities include accused NBFCs and their fintech companies which deposited the funds into the INR wallets of Yellow Tune Technologies held with crypto exchange Flipvolt Technologies Private Limited.
"These amounts were proceeds of crime derived from predatory lending practices. Purchased cryptocurrency was transferred to various unknown foreign wallet addresses," the federal agency said in an official statement as quoted by ANI.
Searches were also conducted at several places of of Yellow Tune Technologies Private Limited from August 8-10 in order to find the beneficial owners of this company and recipient wallets, however, the agency remained unsuccessful in tracking the company's promoters.
It further said that this shell entity was incorporated by Chinese Nationals Alex and Kaidi with the active connivance of willing CAs/CSs and the bank accounts were opened in the name of dummy Directors.
The agency revealed that these Chinese nationals left India in December 2020 and later, the bank internet credentials, digital signatures of dummy Directors etc were transferred abroad and were used by the said Chinese nationals to launder the proceeds of crime.
The probing agency then said that it could trace the Yellow Tune assets to the extent of ₹2.31 crore and has issued freezing order under PMLA. It said that Yellow Tune with the help of Flipvolt Crypto-Exchange assisted the accused fintech companies in avoiding regular banking channels and easily managed to take out all the fraud money in the form of crypto assets.
However, Flipvolt Crypto-Exchange failed to give the complete trail of crypto transactions made by Yellow Tune Technologies, not it could supply any form of KYC of the opposite party wallets.
The federal investigation agency informed that Flipvolt company has actively assisted Yellow Tunes in laundering the proceeds of crime worth ₹370 crore using the cryptocurrency route.
(With ANI inputs)
