Betting apps row: Binance denies receiving ED summons in last 2 months

India's anti-money laundering agency, the Enforcement Directorate (ED), is examining if the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange Binance Holdings had a role to play in helping betting apps allegedly operated by some Chinese individuals.

The ED has reportedly summoned Binance executives for questioning and is awaiting a response. "India is probing betting apps run by Chinese operators, which collected more than 10 billion rupees ($134 million) over the past 10 months, for allegedly laundering part of the money through the WazirX cryptocurrency exchange," a Bloomberg report said. However, Binance has denied receiving any summons in the last two months.

WazirX is India's largest crypto exchange. Binance had acquired WazirX in 2019.
 
"We did not receive any summons in June or July of this year. As per available info in the public domain, the summons was directed to only WazirX," says a Binance spokesperson.  
 
Binance claims to be a proactive player in fighting crime. "We work closely with regulators, law enforcement and industry leaders around the world to further the security and sustainability of the industry while providing the best services and protection to our users, adds the spokesperson. We comply with regulator requests all around the world and we don't comment on any specific engagements," the spokesperson adds.
 
The operators of the apps allegedly used wallets with WazirX for buying, converting and transferring the money to wallets on Binance's platform, the report added.

Earlier in June, the ED had issued a show-cause notice to the Mumbai-based crypto exchange for violating the FEMA Rules, 1999, for transactions involving cryptocurrencies worth Rs 2,790.74 crore.

According to the ED, the users of WazirX have received cryptocurrency worth Rs 880 crore via its pool account from Binance accounts and transferred out cryptocurrency worth Rs 1,400 crore to Binance accounts during the period under investigation.
 
Binance says it is working with top KYC/AML ((Know Your Customer/Anti-Money Laundering) vendors, and geofencing to detect and identify malicious activities on the platform.
 
"The ongoing coordination with regulatory technology providers such as Refinitiv, TRM Labs, and Elliptic further empowers our ability to monitor and trace transactions, streamline KYC processes, and overall align our AML/CFT (Combating the Financing of Terrorism) efforts with global compliance standards. We enforce geofencing detection to block IP addresses from restricted regions, as well as common VPNs. Binance has also integrated multiple threat intelligence feeds, both open-source and proprietary, for identifying high-risk wallet addresses," the spokesperson says.

Last year, the largest global crypto exchange had received accreditation from the International Security of Organisation (ISO), a universally recognised information security management system.

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