ED Issues INTERPOL Purple Notice, Exposing Global Trade-Based Money Laundering

The Enforcement Directorate (ED) of India has issued its first-ever INTERPOL Purple Notice, focusing on a sophisticated trade-based money laundering (TBML) operation. Published on August 21, 2025, the notice is an important part of India’s approach to tackle complex financial crimes that occur across international borders. This notice, distributed by the General Secretariat in Lyon to all 196 member countries, provides extensive intelligence on how criminal networks carry out TBML. The notice details their methods of operation, the items and methods used, and the concealment tactics employed. Although the Purple Notice isn’t an arrest warrant, it serves to inform other countries of the methods employed by organized crime and encourages the timely sharing of intelligence among member countries. The ED’s investigation found an organized network of shell companies running in India and other countries that laundered money as part of international businesses. The people involved exploited trade mechanisms and banking channels, with respect to under-invoicing imports, manufacturing duty-free imports, and creating false documents to show compliance, while also conducting circular re-exports and other methods to disguise the remittances associated with them.