WazirX Received 1,700 Requests from Law Enforcement Agencies in Last Five Months

Indian crypto exchange WazirX released its sixth transparency report on Tuesday, April 23. This report highlights what the company observed in the last five months, between October 2023 and March 2024. Among a bunch of details shared, WazirX claimed that it received a total of 1,700 requests from the law enforcement agencies and all these queries were addressed by the exchange with an accuracy rate of 100 percent.

“WazirX diligently coordinated with Indian and foreign law enforcement agencies and assisted them to identify suspicious transactions, suspected frauds, and identity thefts. Besides that, with the help of third-party transaction monitoring tools WazirX took deterrent action against transactions which appeared to be complex or other than in the normal course,” its report said.

As per the exchange, it recorded a turnaround time for responding to law enforcement requests at 22 minutes for first cut replies. The details come to light at a time when India has been taking strident efforts to increase its oversight on crypto-related industry players as well as transactions. The financial authorities of India are maintaining an eagle eye over crypto exchanges operating in the country to ensure that none of them are unlicenced service providers and that none are being used by exploiters to process unlawful crypto transactions for activities like money laundering.

It is noteworthy that despite India's increased scrutiny over the crypto sector, crimes and scams related to the sector have constantly been reported in the nation between October 2023 and March 2024.

In February this year, for instance, India's financial watchdog, the Enforcement Directorate (ED) reportedly filed a complaint against four individuals alleging them for being connected to a mega crypto scam involving a whopping Rs. 6,600 crores. In November 2023, eight arrests were reportedly made in India as part of an investigation into a crypto scam that duped 100,000 people, leading to the displacement of a collective amount of Rs. 2,500 crores.

To reduce such instances, India has brought all crypto firms under PMLA or the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA). Under the anti-money laundering law, reporting entities are required to maintain KYC details of users and assist law enforcement agencies in identifying potentially suspicious users and transactions – which is what WazirX has claimed it is following, in its transparency report.

“We continued to maintain suspension or blocking of a user's account in case of violation of policies, deficient or suspicious KYC, or any suspicious behaviour identified by our monitoring systems,” the report noted.

Meanwhile, the exchange said it witnessed a 217 percent increase in trading volumes and 122 percent increase in signups between October 2023 to March 2024 as compared to the period between April and September 2023. While WazirX recorded the greatest number of signup rates in December 2023, it clocked its highest trading volume of over $400 million (roughly Rs. 3,332 crore) in March this year.

The exchange has also added 16 new listings and 30 new trading pairs in the last five months. In addition, the platform collaborated with other crypto firms like TaxNodes and GoSats to steer crypto usecases amongst India's developer community. The platform, however, did not mention the exact number of users it is catering to as of now.

In India, crypto exchanges keep releasing these transparency reports to make sure that the status of their business operations are clear. It also helps ensure the public trust on the platforms while engaging with crypto. This eliminates the public fear of running into unfortunate situations and financial crisis that followed the collapse of the FTX crypto exchange in 2022.

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