India will ban URLs of 9 cryptocurrency exchanges, including Binance, for non-compliance with anti-money laundering law

The Financial Intelligence Unit has issued a show-cause notice to nine offshore cryptocurrency exchanges after they were found to be operating illegally in India by failing to comply with the country’s anti-money laundering law.

In Short

• The FIU has sent a show cause notice to 9 foreign cryptocurrency exchanges.
• The FIU advised MeitY to block the URLs of all 9 cryptocurrency exchanges.
• All nine cryptocurrency exchanges have been removed for non-compliance with India’s anti-money laundering law.

The Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU), under India’s Ministry of Finance, has issued a show-cause notice to 9 offshore cryptocurrency exchanges and asked the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) to block their URL in India. The proceedings were initiated for alleged non-compliance with the Indian anti-money laundering law. According to the notice sent by FIU, these 9 cryptocurrency exchanges, including Binance and Kucoin, are operating illegally in India. The nine exchanges that received the show cause notice include Binance, Kucoin, Huobi, Kraken, Gate.io, Bittrex, Bitstamp, MEXC Global and Bitfenex.

“As part of enforcement action against offshore entities, the Financial Intelligence Unit of India (FIU IND) has issued enforcement notices to the following nine offshore virtual digital asset service providers (VDA SPs) under Section 13 of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act, 2002 (PMLA),” reads the show cause notice.