The Enforcement Directorate has received a significant boost in its investigation into the alleged OctaFX online forex trading fraud, with a special court under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act approving the agency’s request to seek legal assistance from Spain. On July 13, the PMLA court approved the ED’s application for a Letter of Request to Spanish authorities under the mutual legal assistance mechanism, clearing the way for the agency to pursue execution of its provisional attachment orders, obtain property records, and collect digital evidence located in Spain.
A Global Network Built to Look Legitimate
The case centres on OctaFX, an unauthorised online forex trading platform accused of cheating Indian investors by promising high returns while manipulating trading outcomes through falsified candlestick charts and deliberate slippage designed to ensure consistent investor losses. The ED alleges the operation was controlled by Russian national Pavel Aleksandrovich Prozorov, who designed and supervised OctaFX’s operational structure as a mechanism for generating, layering and integrating proceeds of crime through multiple entities and financial channels.
The platform built its Indian credibility partly through mainstream sports and celebrity marketing, having once served as a trading partner of IPL franchise Delhi Capitals and secured endorsements from television personalities including Krystle Dsouza and Karan Wahi. Behind that public-facing legitimacy, investigators found a genuinely global back-end: marketing handled through entities in the British Virgin Islands, servers and back-office operations in Spain, payment gateways managed out of Estonia, technical support run from Georgia, and a Cyprus-based holding company, with funds ultimately routed abroad disguised as payments for fake software imports and R&D services.
How Investor Money Was Layered and Moved
According to the ED, OctaFX collected investor funds through UPI and local bank transfers, which were then routed through dummy Indian entities and individual accounts, layered across multiple mule accounts before leaving the country. Unauthorised payment aggregators reportedly facilitated this movement by providing merchant IDs and integration kits to shell companies posing as e-commerce platforms, allowing payments that were actually investor deposits to appear as ordinary transactions for goods or services.
The agency has identified several Spain-incorporated entities central to this structure, including Amber Soluciones and Mercats City SL, alleging they played a significant role in the OctaFX network’s functioning. Investigators say key digital infrastructure, servers and financial records tied to the investigation remain located in Spain, which is precisely why executing India’s existing attachment orders requires this newly approved international legal assistance route.
Three Attachment Orders and an Alleged Mastermind’s Arrest
The ED has already issued three provisional attachment orders covering Spain-based assets. The first, issued December 3, 2024, covered 19 immovable properties valued at approximately ₹41.73 crore. The second, issued July 3, 2025, covered three movable and two immovable properties worth around ₹131.45 crore. The third, issued in October 2025, targeted cryptocurrency assets worth approximately $318 million, or roughly ₹2,385 crore, which the ED says are beneficially owned by Prozorov but currently remain under the control of Spanish police authorities following his arrest.
Spanish police arrested Prozorov in October 2025 in coordination with Indian investigative agencies, and the ED has since said it intends to pursue his extradition to India, though officials have acknowledged the process is likely to be long and complicated given its cross-border, multi-jurisdictional nature. Cumulative reporting on the scale of the alleged fraud has varied somewhat: the ED’s own assessment puts OctaFX’s India-derived profits at over ₹5,000 crore generated between 2019 and 2024, while some more recent reports describe investor losses through its Indian subsidiary specifically at over ₹800 crore, a difference likely reflecting gross platform revenue versus direct investor losses within the broader operation. Total assets attached in the case, spanning immovable property, a luxury yacht and cryptocurrency holdings, have already crossed ₹2,681 crore, with a Prosecution Complaint and a Supplementary Prosecution Complaint filed against OctaFX and 54 other accused persons and entities before the Special PMLA Court, which has taken cognisance of both filings.
The court, in approving the latest Letter of Request, found sufficient prima facie grounds to seek international legal assistance, noting it was necessary to execute the existing attachment orders and secure further evidence located in Spain. The investigation continues, with the ED focused on tracing the network’s remaining foreign entities, digital assets and financial beneficiaries through sustained international cooperation.
