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The Enforcement Directorate‘s Mumbai unit has frozen movable properties worth about Rs 80.43 crore during searches conducted earlier this week as part of an ongoing investigation into illegal online forex trading through the OctaFx trading app and website.

On July 22, ED searched various locations in Mumbai, Kolkata, Delhi, and Gurgaon. The frozen assets include bank funds and Demat account holdings.

Various incriminating documents and digital devices were also seized during the operation, ED said. The total attachment and freezing in this case have now reached approximately Rs 118 crore.

Earlier in April, the ED’s Mumbai Zonal Office conducted search operations under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA), 2002, across Mumbai, Chennai, Kolkata, and Delhi.

This probe was initiated based on a first information report (FIR) lodged at Pune’s Shivaji Nagar police station. The FIR accused several individuals of luring people with promises of high returns and defrauding them under the guise of forex trading through the OctaFx platform.

In 2022, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) released an alert list of entities unauthorised to deal in forex under the Foreign Exchange Management Act, 1999 (FEMA), or operate electronic trading platforms (ETPs) for forex transactions. The list included OctaFx among other entities.