For several years, Praveen Kumar Kapoor had been absconding. But as he tried to fly into an airport near New York around Diwali last year, the co-founder and promoter of realty and finance firm SRS Group was caught and deported to India. An Interpol Red Notice was his undoing. In March, more than 2,300 homebuyers in the National Capital Region—who were left in the lurch a few years ago due to an elaborate scam of over Rs 2,000 crore by Kapoor and his associates—got their houses back.
Just as Vijay Mallya was gearing up for a birthday bash thrown by his friend Lalit Modi in London a week or so before Christmas last year, former employees of Mallya’s defunct Kingfisher Airlines heard that a gift was on their way. Over Rs 300 crore of their unpaid dues had been recovered and would soon be repatriated to their bank accounts.
These are just two of the 38-odd cases in which the Directorate of Enforcement (ED) secured the restitution of Rs 32,688 crore to victims—including individual citizens, banks and investors—between April 2025 and March 2026.
Restitution refers to the court-authorised return of seized or confiscated assets—acquired through financial crimes like money laundering or fraud—to their rightful owners or victims.
It’s no secret that the public perception of the ED as an institution is that of a law-enforcement agency that operates far away from their everyday lives, going after political bigwigs and business czars in cases that often take a long time to unravel. In the past few years, the agency has been putting in an effort to change that image by not just focussing on busting frauds and freezing illicit wealth, but also getting dues back to the victims. It wants to be the Robin Hood of the town.
The data tells the story: the agency returned zero money to victims between 2005 and 2014. While it restituted over Rs 15,200 crore cumulatively between 2014 and 2024, that figure stood at Rs 15,263 crore in the financial year 2024-25. And then the number grew significantly—almost doubling to Rs 32,678 crore—in 2025-26. (The agency follows the financial calendar of April-March as Indian corporations do.)
That work has not gone unnoticed. The Financial Action Task Force, an intergovernmental organisation that combats money laundering, cited the ED’s actions in a global best practices report last year for its efficiency and coordination in tracing and confiscating criminal proceeds.
“In cases involving banks, investors and homebuyers, the objective of the PMLA (Prevention of Money Laundering Act) extends beyond attachment and confiscation to facilitating restitution to victims and rightful owners. This commitment is reflected in the sharp rise in restitution,” says Rahul Navin, director of ED. “The directorate’s mandate extends beyond securing convictions; a core objective is to deprive offenders of the enjoyment of the proceeds of crime,” he adds.
The ED has undergone a significant institutional transition since its inception in 1956. Originally established as an Enforcement Unit within the Department of Economic Affairs (DEA) to oversee foreign exchange regulations, it has evolved into a financial intelligence and investigative agency that tackles money laundering.
Challenges Galore
For years, OctaFX had sold Indian investors a seductive fiction: easy wealth through forex, crypto and commodity trades, wrapped in glossy apps and influencer marketing. Behind the polished interface lay a sprawling transnational fraud machine that siphoned Rs 5,000 crore from India.
Then came the reckoning.
In October 2025, the faceless architecture of one of the world’s slickest forex scams began to crack as Spanish police arrested kingpin Pavel Prozorov under pressure from the ED.
In a sweeping strike, the agency attached cryptocurrencies worth Rs 2,385 crore, part of a wider seizure net now crossing Rs 2,681 crore. Luxury villas, 19 properties and even a yacht off Spain’s coast were drawn into the dragnet. At the centre stood alleged mastermind Prozorov, whose network stretched from the British Virgin Islands to Estonia, Dubai, Cyprus, Singapore and Russia.
“It was not easy. The ED had to convince the FBI [Federal Bureau of Investigation] to put pressure on the Spanish authorities. Further investigation is on, but the eventual restitution of money to the victims will take time,” says a person close to the matter.
The types of cases investigated by the ED have significantly evolved over the years. Initially, cases of bank fraud constituted the majority of the cases taken up for investigation under the category of fraud. However, in the last few years, there has been a sharp rise in technology-driven and cross-border crimes, including crypto-cyber frauds, online betting apps and digital arrest scams. According to the ED’s annual report, crypto and cyber cases registered by the agency rose fourfold from 31 in the financial year 2024-25 to 134 in the next.
The agency has also seen growing involvement in narcotics-linked financial networks, where drug trafficking proceeds are laundered through real estate and crypto assets. Many times, these networks turn out to have overlaps with terrorism.
After a freak accident led to a pressure cooker bomb detonating prematurely in Mohammed Shariq’s lap in Mangaluru, the ED got to know that the Islamic State operative had been dealing in crypto. Subsequent investigations showed that he received as much Rs 3 lakh in cryptocurrencies from his Pakistani handlers to purchase items online to build the bomb and plant it in a temple.
“While the ED continues to investigate bank frauds, the evolving criminal landscape has led to a notable rise in cases involving cryptocurrency fraud, cyber-enabled financial crimes, terrorism, anti-national activities and narcotics trafficking,” says Navin.
For all the political brickbats the agency receives, the ED has been quite efficient when compared to the typical government department. A simple back-of-the-envelope calculation shows that it returned Rs 30 to victims for every rupee of its departmental budget spent last year.
As India chases its ambition of becoming a $10 trillion economy, the uncomfortable truth is that its financial underbelly is certain to get bigger. And, the agency’s job will only get tougher as the world becomes ever more digitally connected with artificial intelligence and crypto. The criminals are scaling up. The question is whether the ED can do it faster.
Deepsekhar Choudhury is Managing Editor, Outlook Business and reports at the intersections of technology, policy and business
