India, July 23 -- The Enforcement Directorate's (ED's) Rs.800-crore money-laundering investigation into unauthorised foreign-exchange trading platform OctaFX and its associates has revealed that it allegedly used the services of fintech professionals to create mule bank accounts and linked them with fake e-commerce websites to gain access to payment gateways so that it could disguise investor's funds as payments towards online purchases, according to officials aware of the developments.

The funds were then allegedly routed abroad towards payments for non-existent imports and freight services, officials said. The agency's probe also revealed that 16 such fake e-commerce firms were allegedly set up in Kerala's Ernakulam district, their off...