ENFORCEMENT Directorate (ED) Director Rahul Navin on Friday asserted that financial crimes like bank frauds, corporate scams and cheating in the real estate sector have seen a “visible decline” due to “sustained” action by investigative agencies and some “landmark” Government initiatives. Delivering his address during the 70th ‘ED Day’ event here, the agency chief said the current criminal landscape was “defined” by cryptocurrency fraud, cyber-enabled financial crimes, terror financing, anti-national activities and narcotics trafficking. These are the agency’s “priority” areas of investigation, he added. Navin said the ED filed an enhanced number of chargesheets during the last financial year 2025-26 and was undertaking enhanced investigation into “complex” money laundering cases as a result of “deliberate, sustained, and intelligence-driven effort”. “A few years ago, our enforcement work was centred predominantly on bank frauds, large corporate scams, and real estate frauds. “Sustained action by investigative agencies, complemented by landmark government initiatives such as the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code and the Real Estate Regulation and Development Act, has brought about a visible decline in such offences.”

 

“Today, the criminal landscape is defined by cryptocurrency fraud, cyber-enabled financial crimes, terror financing, anti-national activities, and narcotics trafficking,” he said. Calling money laundering investigations amongst the “most complex”, Navin said these probes frequently span multiple jurisdictions, involve intricate cross-border transactions and layered financial structures, and demand engagement with rapidly evolving technologies. The ED chief added that the agency has accorded “high priority” to narcotics-related investigations. He said the ED’s prompt and focused response in the Red Fort blast case (of November 2025) was a “testament” to its “sharpened vigilance on money laundering dimensions of terrorism and espionage”. The Director also said that the current conviction rate of the ED was 94 per cent and the agency was confident that out of more than 2,400 cases pending before trial courts currently, most will result in the conviction of the accused and confiscation of the proceeds of crime. According to Navin, the ED also attached assets of Rs 81,422 crore during the last fiscal, an increase of 170 per cent over the previous year. The total provisional attachments, undertaken to deprive the accused from enjoying the fruits of their allegedly illicitly earned assets, stand at Rs 2,36,017 crore.