Amit Madanlal Lakhanpal, the principal accused in the Money Trade Coin (MTC) cryptocurrency fraud case, has been arrested in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) on the strength of an Interpol Red Notice sought by Thane City Police in Maharashtra.
The Enforcement Directorate (ED), India’s federal financial-crime agency, had shared his location with foreign authorities ahead of the September 1, 2026 detention. The Government of India has since started extradition proceedings and asked investigating agencies to compile case papers in support of the request.
The development was first reported by Indian newspapers on the night of September 9, 2026, eight days after the arrest. Times of India said UAE authorities informed Indian counterparts of the detention on September 1, and Hindustan Times reported, citing officials familiar with the file, that the ED’s location input preceded the arrest.
The case
The ED’s money-laundering investigation, registered under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act, 2002 (PMLA), is built on a First Information Report (FIR) filed by Thane City Police against Lakhanpal, Taha Hafiz Qazi, Sachin Vasant Shelar, Komal Bhimrao Shirsath and other accused.
According to an official press release issued by the ED’s Mumbai Zonal Office on August 20, 2026, an unrecognised cryptocurrency called Money Trade Coin was floated, and investors were induced to put in money, resulting in alleged cheating of about ₹113.10 crore between August 2017 and April 2018.
Lakhanpal has not been convicted, and the case remains under investigation. He is entitled to contest extradition under UAE law and the India-UAE extradition treaty, which was signed in 1999 and came into force in 2000.
How the 2018 sting opened the file
The criminal trail did not begin in 2026. It opened in early 2018, when an undercover television series titled Operation Bitcoin was first broadcast on February 5, 2018. Reporters posing as high-net-worth investors walked into the Thane office of Flintstone Group, the firm police later linked to MTC.
Company officials, including Digambar Jangle, then described in police briefings as a senior MTC functionary and a serving Thane police officer, allegedly promised returns of 10 to 20 times the capital in four to six months. The pitch, as recorded in the broadcast and later reflected in police statements, also included Caribbean citizenship, Dubai property and escrow arrangements.
A complaint by Delhi businessman Pravin Agarwal and the broadcast together led Thane Police to raid Flintstone offices on June 4, 2018. Officers registered a case at Chitalsar police station, arrested Taha Hafiz Qazi, described by police as the technical operator, and seized 53 laptops along with documents from the Orion Business Park office on Ghodbunder Road.
Then Thane Police Commissioner Param Bir Singh publicly credited the India Today report at a press conference on June 5, 2018, saying the expose helped complainants come forward. Police at the time placed investor losses in a much higher band, between about ₹300 crore and ₹500 crore, and referred to anywhere between 2,500 and 25,000 investors depending on the briefing.
Those early police figures have not been adopted as the ED’s working number. The agency’s August 20 statement confines the PMLA predicate to about ₹113.10 crore for the August 2017 to April 2018 window.
Lakhanpal had already left India by the time the FIR was registered.
What investigators say MTC was
MTC was marketed as a redeemable digital coin. Promoters held a launch event in Dubai in September 2017. Contemporary police accounts said the token was offered at about $3 and later quoted at as high as $6,000, an appreciation of roughly 200,000%. Thane Police in 2018 said about 105 million coins had been launched and that further coins were “mined.” A separate promotional event was hosted at the Taj Mahal Palace in Colaba, Mumbai on October 18, 2017.
Both events featured film personalities, and police briefings from that period noted that photographs recovered from the 2018 raid showed Lakhanpal with politicians and Bollywood figures. Appearances at such events do not, by themselves, establish knowledge of the alleged fraud.
The ED says Lakhanpal ran investor seminars in Delhi, Pune and Nashik, presented himself as a Finance Ministry official, and told audiences that the Government of India would recognise MTC. Affiliated brands used in the pitch, according to the same ED release, included Coin Deposit Ratio, MTC Banque, MTCX India and Cryptozaniya.
The agency alleges that token rates were manipulated on those platforms and that withdrawals and trading were then stopped, leaving investors without their principal or the promised returns.
The ED and Thane Police have also said the coin was never listed on a recognised exchange and that collections were made without approvals from the government or the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), the country’s central bank.
Lakhanpal styled himself “Dr. Amit Madanlal Lakhanpal” and published a self-titled book, The World of Cryptocurrency.
The Caribbean passport trail
The ED’s August 20 release states that Lakhanpal and other accused obtained Antigua and Barbuda passports and were living in Dubai under assumed identities. Antigua and Barbuda operates a citizenship-by-investment programme. Hindustan Times reported on August 22, 2026, that Lakhanpal had used the Caribbean passport to remain in the UAE.
Investigators, speaking to Indian media, said that after Lakhanpal left, his wife remained in India, was stopped three times in 2023 and 2024 on a lookout circular, and later left in 2025 on an Antigua passport. The ED has not confirmed that family detail in any public statement.
Sources told the paper that Lakhanpal later obtained an Antigua passport for her and sent it to India, and that she left the country on that passport in 2025. Those claims are attributed to investigators and have not been confirmed by the ED in any public statement.
India has an extradition arrangement with Antigua and Barbuda dating to 2001 and the 1999 treaty with the UAE. The present arrest was made in the UAE, not in the Caribbean.
Silver Notice, Red Notice and the August searches
Two Interpol instruments sit on this file. A Silver Notice, used to ask member countries for information on assets linked to crime, was issued against Lakhanpal, and the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), India’s federal investigative agency, disclosed it in May 2026.
A Red Notice, which asks countries to locate and provisionally arrest a person wanted for prosecution, was issued at Thane Police’s request and is the instrument cited for the September 1 arrest.
The ED’s Mumbai Zonal Office searched premises in Mumbai and Thane on August 12, 2026 under PMLA. The August 20 press release said the searches yielded about ₹1 crore (approximately $105,000) in cash, along with documents and digital devices.
What happens next
A Red Notice is not a conviction and is not, by itself, an extradition order. Indian officials have said a formal request will move through diplomatic channels under the 1999 treaty. The Ministry of External Affairs typically handles such requests together with the Ministry of Home Affairs, the ED and the state police. UAE courts will decide on surrender. India has used the same channel in other 2026 fugitive returns from Dubai.
Thane Police continue the predicate cheating investigation, and the ED continues the PMLA probe. No public ED statement has been issued specifically on the UAE arrest as of the morning of September 10, 2026, and the August 20 search release remains the most recent official ED document on the case.
Investors who put money into MTC in 2017 and 2018 have waited eight years for a custody breakthrough. Recovery is a separate question. The cash seized in August is a small fraction of the ₹113.10 crore the ED now cites, and a still smaller fraction of the ₹300 crore to ₹500 crore range invoked by Thane Police in 2018.
Whether attached properties and the Silver Notice asset hunt close that gap will depend on what investigators find in Dubai, Antigua and India after Lakhanpal is produced in court.
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