India's Enforcement Directorate searched premises tied to CoinDCX and Delta Exchange India, alleging the platforms routed users' trades to offshore exchanges including Binance and Bybit. Delta Exchange India denies cross-border transfers, CoinDCX has not commented, and none of the allegations have been proven.
India's Enforcement Directorate (ED) searched three premises tied to Neblio Technologies, the parent of CoinDCX, and Excelium Technologies, which operates Delta Exchange India. The searches ran between Nov. 4 and Nov. 5 in Bengaluru under the Foreign Exchange Management Act (FEMA), India's law on cross-border money flows. The agency said the trades in question ran into thousands of crores of rupees.
How the alleged routing worked
According to the investigation team, CoinDCX users deposited rupees that were converted into stablecoins, mostly the dollar-pegged token USDT. The funds were then sent to overseas platforms including Binance, Kucoin, Gate.io and Bybit, which the ED says sidestepped India's forex rules.
For spot trades, the ED claims CoinDCX used an account opened in the name of a Costa Rica-based company to send USDT abroad. The agency described that company as a "paper entity" and alleged the trades ran directly through CoinDCX's application programming interfaces (APIs).
The ED made similar claims about CoinDCX's futures and options product. It alleged that when users placed orders, CoinDCX opened matching positions on foreign platforms and settled them overseas. It also claimed the exchange's tokenized-stock trading ran through Hyperliquid and that the exchange paid hundreds of crores in fees to foreign platforms in stablecoins.
Delta Exchange India denies transfers
Delta Exchange India faces related claims. The ED alleged that much of Delta's derivatives and tokenized-stock flow passed through CoinDCX before reaching foreign venues, and that Delta sent hundreds of crores of rupees to overseas associate entities.
Delta Exchange India says it is cooperating "fully" with officials and operating business as usual. CoinDCX had not issued a statement at press time.
A wider push against crypto platforms
The searches follow other ED action. Days earlier, the agency opened a probe into Mudrex, Saber.money, and the decentralized finance protocol Instadapp and its platform Fluid over alleged cross-border transfers of more than $525M (₹4,940 crore). In June, it searched six premises linked to Transak, Carret, Xpat, Onramp.money and Onmeta.
The ED says its investigations are ongoing. The open questions are whether it moves to freeze assets or summon executives, and whether the Securities and Exchange Board of India opens its own case over the derivatives and tokenized-stock products.
Source: Bitcoin News
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