ED targets forex, FDI offences after returning ₹15,261 cr to laundering victims

New Delhi: Riding on its improved global ranking in combating money laundering, India's financial crime-fighting agency, the Enforcement Directorate (ED), will now prioritise probing violations related to foreign exchange (forex) and foreign direct investment (FDI), its chief Rahul Navin said on Thursday.

Speaking at an event organized by the ED in the national capital, Navin said that the multi-disciplinary probe agency has in the recent past stepped up its enforcement action on money laundering, leading to restitution of  ₹15,261 crore to victims like investors and banks in 30 cases in FY25.

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Last September, Paris-based Financial Action Task Force (FATF), a global agency that develops policies to combat money laundering and terror financing, placed India in its ‘regular follow-up category’, a distinction shared only by the UK, France and Italy among G-20 countries.

“The next area where we intend to focus this year is on Foreign Exchange Management Act (FEMA) violations,” Navin said.

ED has been entrusted with enforcing FEMA to ensure that the rules, regulations, notifications, circulars, directives and orders issued by the central government and the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) are followed in letter and spirit, Navin said.

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“To fulfil this mandate, ED will carry out necessary investigations and adjudication and will impose penalties in cases of defaults related to export-import manipulations, violations of norms related to FDI and external commercial borrowings, restrictions on landownership by non-residents, transfer of money abroad through unauthorized channels, etc. ED will encourage such defaulters to file applications for compounding of the offences, wherever appropriate,” said Navin.

FEMA is a civil law and parties in default or violation can voluntarily apply to ED or RBI for compounding of offences, or settlement by paying an amount. Once the offence is compounded, no further action will be pursued against the person.

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For speeding up restitution of assets involved in money laundering cases, ED is increasingly adopting the approach of ‘non-conviction-based confiscation and restitution,’ a global practice of asset forfeiture where it is not possible to obtain a criminal conviction for factors like defendant being dead, unknown or missing or where prosecution cannot be initiated in old cases.

Navin said that in the initial years, after the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) was brought into effect in 2005, less than 200 cases were recorded in a year. The total criminal property attached was only ₹5,171 crore till 31 March 2014, with the first prosecution complaint being filed only in 2012.

However, there has been a significant ramp-up in PMLA enforcement activity in the past decade, with 5,113 new money laundering probes getting initiated in the ten years to 2024, averaging more than 500 cases a year, the probe agency’s chief said.

In FY25, as many as 775 new PMLA investigations were launched, 333 prosecution complaints were filed and 34 individuals were convicted, Navin said.

In this period, ED has issued 461 provisional attachment orders valued at ₹30,036 crore—a 44% increase in the number of attachments and a 141% rise in value compared to the previous year. As on 31 March 2025, the total value of assets under provisional attachment stood at about ₹1.55 trillion, as per official data.

Additional Solicitor General of India S.V. Raju, who was present on the occasion, said ED officials should “use their power to arrest not liberally, but sparingly” as proper ground for arrest and its timing were important.