India’s financial crime-fighting agency is searching multiple premises of the Bengaluru-headquartered crypto exchange startup CoinSwitch Kuber over suspicion of violation of the South Asian market’s local foreign exchange management act, two people familiar with the matter said.
The Enforcement Directorate began the searches on Thursday and the probe is ongoing, the people said, requesting anonymity as the matter is private and sensitive. The move follows ED’s similar probes into the premises of crypto firms WazirX and Vauld in recent weeks.
“We receive queries from various government agencies. Our approach has always been that of transparency. Crypto is an early stage industry with a lot of potential and we continuously engage with all stakeholders,” a CoinSwitch Kuber spokesperson told TechCrunch in a statement.
The startup, valued at nearly $2 billion and backed by Andreessen Horowitz and Sequoia India, declined to elaborate.
The government agency has performed over a half a dozen probes into tech firms this year including Chinese smartphone vendors Vivo, Oppo and Xiaomi and seized over $1 billion of capital that it said firms had evaded in fraudulent tax computations.
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