WazirX blacklists 2,431suspicious accounts between October-March

Crypto exchange WazirX received 431 requests from Law Enforcement agencies (LEA), against a total transaction volume of $390 million on the platform between October 2022 and March 2023, the exchange said in a report. This comes at a time when the Finance Ministry moved to include crypto platforms under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act, 2002 (PMLA).

Out of this, 46 requests were from Foreign LEAs and 385 requests from Indian LEAs. Overall WazirX blacklisted over 2431 accounts during this period with the help of third-party monitoring tools.

All of these requests pertained to matters related to account blocking, suspected criminal proceedings, investigation, and information was sought from WazirX as to whether such accused had dealt in Crypto through our platform.

Earlier, between April-September, WazirX had received double the current number of requests from the LEAs at 828.

“We also continued to proactively report suspicious transactions to law enforcement agencies such as the Financial Intelligence Unit, India (FIU-IND),” the report said. This WazirX’s fourth transparency report.

Between October-March, WazirX had 3,96,126 user interactions.

Rajagopal Menon, Vice President, WazirX said, “The transparency report is a testament to our commitment to enabling a secure and reliable Crypto ecosystem for our users. We focussed our efforts on making our platform more user friendly and provided a robust customer service for our users to connect with for any concerns.”

He added, “We also kept up our ongoing efforts of collaborating with Law Enforcement Agencies to make Crypto free of any fraudulent activities, and usher in an environment of trust.”

Some of the Indian and Foreign Law Enforcement Agencies that WazirX has worked with during this period are the National Investigation Agency (NIA), Enforcement Directorate, State Cyber Crime Cells, Odisha Vigilance Department, Special Task Force, Bhopal Police, WB Police, Maharashtra Police, Crime Branch, Toronto Police Department, Police Department Dortmund, New York County District Attorney, Burlington Police, California Police Department, Florida Police, etc.