India Freezes 646.7 Million Rupees Tied to WazirX as Ownership Dispute Erupts

India’s Directorate of Enforcement said on August 5, 2022 that it had frozen 64.67 crore rupees (646.7 million rupees) in bank balances tied to Zanmai Labs, the operator it identified with cryptocurrency exchange WazirX. The action followed an August 3 search of a WazirX director and formed part of a money-laundering investigation into instant-loan companies and their fintech partners.

The freeze was the consequential development; the agency’s accusations were not a final judicial finding. The Directorate of Enforcement, or ED, said WazirX had failed to supply transaction information and wallet know-your-customer records for suspect loan-app companies. WazirX told Reuters that it had cooperated fully, disagreed with the allegations and was evaluating its next steps.

What the agency alleged

The ED said it was tracing proceeds from companies accused of predatory lending and violations of Reserve Bank of India rules. According to the agency, some operators moved funds into crypto assets and then to unidentified foreign wallets. It alleged that WazirX’s compliance controls and recordkeeping prevented investigators from accounting for the assets.

The August 5 release made several specific claims. It said WazirX had not recorded bank-account details for incoming funds before July 2020, did not perform physical-address verification, and had not provided records concerning crypto assets allegedly purchased with loan-app fraud proceeds. It further alleged that the exchange had assisted 16 accused fintech companies in laundering proceeds through crypto. Those are contemporaneous government allegations, not independently established facts in the source record reviewed for this reconstruction.

The amount frozen also requires precision. One crore equals 10 million, so 64.67 crore rupees is 646.7 million rupees. That conversion is arithmetic, not a market valuation. Reuters separately rendered the amount as $8.16 million using an exchange rate of 79.204 rupees per dollar in its August 5 report; because foreign-exchange rates vary by timestamp and provider, the rupee figure in the ED release is the controlling measurement here.

An ownership dispute broke into public view

The enforcement action exposed a second institutional problem: it was unclear from the companies’ public accounts who owned and controlled which parts of WazirX. The ED described a network of agreements among Zanmai Labs, Crowdfire, Zettai and Binance, and alleged that Binance controlled crypto-to-crypto transactions while Zanmai handled rupee-to-crypto activity.

Hours after the release, Binance chief executive Changpeng Zhao said Binance had never owned shares in Zanmai Labs and that a transaction announced in November 2019 had not been completed. He described Binance’s role as providing wallet infrastructure. That position sat uneasily beside WazirX’s November 21, 2019 announcement, which said WazirX had been “successfully acquired” by Binance. Reuters documented both the freeze and Zhao’s August 5 denial.

The contradiction mattered beyond corporate branding. Investigators needed to know which legal entity controlled customer onboarding, transaction records, wallets and responses to lawful requests. Users also needed clarity about which entity stood behind the platform’s services. The August 5 record established that the parties did not present a single, uncontested account of those responsibilities.

What was known—and not known—on August 5

By the end of August 5, the verifiable facts were narrow: the ED had announced a search and a freeze of 64.67 crore rupees; WazirX disputed the allegations and said it had cooperated; and Binance’s chief executive denied equity ownership of Zanmai Labs despite the earlier acquisition language.

The public materials reviewed do not include the underlying freezing order, complete transaction records, wallet-level evidence or a court ruling on the alleged laundering. They therefore cannot establish that WazirX or its personnel committed money laundering, nor can they resolve ownership. What the date did establish was a significant Indian enforcement action against a prominent crypto trading venue and an immediate governance dispute over who controlled the exchange. That combination made compliance accountability—not token prices—the central digital-asset story of August 5, 2022.