The Centre Wednesday sanctioned a significant manpower boost for the Enforcement Directorate (ED), authorising more than 1,200 additional investigators and staff for the anti-money laundering agency, amid rising cases, complex investigations, including cybercrimes, Artificial Intelligence and cryptocurrency, and enforcement actions over the years.
The the much-awaited cadre restructuring of the agency after 15 years, enhancing its workforce by more than 60 per cent – from 2,029 to 3,256. The ministry revised ED’s strength by 1,227 personnel across its six cadres, including the executive, legal, and adjudication verticals that form the core of its investigation setup.
Of this, 803 additional officials have been added to the rank of Assistant Enforcement Officer, 606 to Enforcement Officer, and 531 to Assistant Director of Enforcement.
The last cadre restructuring of ED, undertaken to reorient an organisation to meet new and upcoming challenges, occurred in 2011.
Official data shows that searches or raids conducted by the agency under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) almost doubled to 2,892 during the 2025-26 financial year, while it also led to the highest-ever provisional attachment of assets in that year.
Earlier, ED Director Rahul Navin had said attachments under the PMLA have risen sharply over the years.
“In the first decade after the law came into force, from 2005 to 2014, total attachments stood at Rs 5,171.32 crore, averaging about Rs 574.6 crore annually. In the following decade, from 2014 to 2024, this rose to Rs 1,19,386.25 crore. In 2024-25, the ED attached properties worth Rs 30,036.41 crore, while in 2025-26 the figure rose to Rs 81,422.63 crore. Attachments in a single financial year are now more than fifteen times the cumulative total of the Act’s first decade.”
ED raids doubled in the 2025-26 financial year, as compared to 1,491 in the previous fiscal.
The agency filed 812 chargesheets during FY26, compared to 457 such complaints for prosecution filed before the courts the previous year. The number of Enforcement Case Information Reports (ECIRs), registered to trigger PMLA probes, also jumped 39 per cent to 1,080 in the last fiscal, compared to 775 cases filed during FY25.
