According to news on December 29, India’s Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU) has issued warnings to nine unregistered offshore cryptocurrency platforms, including Binance, and written to India’s Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeiTY) requesting that the URLs of these nine institutions be blocked. In addition to Binance and KuCoin, other virtual digital asset service providers that have been warned for not registering with India’s Financial Intelligence Unit include Huobi, Kraken, Gate.io, Bittrex, Bitstamp, MEXCGlobal, and Bitfenex.
The Financial Intelligence Unit under the Ministry of Finance has issued warnings to these offshore cryptocurrency and virtual digital asset platforms for failing to comply with India’s Anti-Money Laundering (PML) Act.
According to Indian regulations, virtual digital asset service providers, whether in India or offshore, as long as they are engaged in the exchange of virtual digital assets and legal tender, the transfer of virtual digital assets, the custody of virtual digital assets, and the control of virtual digital assets, are required to register as a "reporting entity" with the Indian Financial Intelligence Unit and comply with various obligations under the Anti-Money Laundering Act of 2002 (PMLA).
These obligations are based on specific conduct and do not depend on the physical presence of the relevant institutions in India.
The Indian Ministry of Finance stated that according to the Anti-Money Laundering Act, virtual digital asset service providers have obligations such as reporting matters and keeping transaction records, and they also need to register with the Indian Financial Intelligence Unit.
The Indian Finance Ministry said in a statement: "As part of the compliance actions taken against offshore entities, the Financial Intelligence Unit of India has issued compliance warnings under Section 13 of the Anti-Money Laundering Act, 2002 to the following nine offshore virtual digital asset service providers."
Under the Indian Information Tax Act, reporting entities are required to submit a financial transaction statement to the tax department containing details of certain financial transactions and any reportable account information maintained during the year.
In March this year, India included virtual digital asset service providers within the scope of the anti-money laundering framework in accordance with the provisions of the Anti-Money Laundering Act.
So far, 31 virtual digital asset service providers have registered with India’s Financial Intelligence Unit.
However, the Indian Finance Ministry added that several offshore entities that most Indian users are accustomed to using are not registered.