In the months following the blocking of nine offshore exchanges in India for violating local anti-money laundering laws, the largest cryptocurrency exchange in the world, Binance, registered with the Financial Intelligence Unit in India (FIU-IND).
Still, the compliance processes are ongoing, thus this registration is just the first step. Only until these procedures are finished—the payment of a penalty cost has not yet been determined—will the exchange begin operations in India.
After rival KuCoin registered in March, Binance has nearly completed the same process. In the meantime, OKX made the decision to stop providing services in India on April 30.
Vivek Aggarwal, Director, FIU-IND and Additional Secretary, Department of Revenue, Government of India, states that KuCoin has now paid a penalty fee of Rs 34.5 lakh and is fully registered and operating.
Binance’s operations have not yet restarted, and the fine’s exact amount is yet unknown. As of the now, Binance has finished the FIU-IND first registration process. Aggarwal continued, “Its penalty and compliance proceedings are still ongoing,” during a session organized on May 10 in New Delhi by the trade association Bharat Web3 Association (BWA).
FIU-IND officials, BWA members, and sixty representatives from 35 different REs attended the workshop. Founders and senior executives from CoinDCX, CoinSwitch, WazirX, Mudrex, Unocoin, Pi42, and Giottus were among them, emphasizing the significance of PMLA compliance for the VDA (virtual digital asset) participants. Another participant in the program was Kucoin, the first foreign exchange registered with FIU-IND.
By the end of December, it was discovered that about nine offshore exchanges, including KuCoin, Binance, OKX, and Houbi, were not registered with the FBI-IND and did not adhere to the guidelines set forth by the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA), 2002.
In January of that year, the Indian government issued an order to restrict the URLs of these exchanges. Even the Google and Apple app stores deleted their applications.
