India's financial intelligence agency issued violation notices to 15 offshore cryptocurrency platforms
The Financial Intelligence Unit of India (FIU-IND) issued non-compliance notices to 15 offshore virtual digital asset service providers under Article 13 of the Anti-Money Laundering Act, including Weex, Blofin, Rezorex, Bitunix, DigiFinex, Toobit, XT.com, Latoken, WOO X, Pionex, ChangeNow, SimpleSwap, Fixedfloat, WhiteBIT, and Guardarian. These platforms are accused of providing services to Indian users without registering with FIU-IND.Since March 2023, India has included cryptocurrency platforms in the same anti-money laundering regulatory framework as banks, requiring any platform serving Indian customers, regardless of whether they have an office in India, to complete registration and fulfill user verification, record-keeping, and suspicious transaction reporting obligations. FIU-IND also warned the public that cryptocurrency products and NFTs are unregulated and carry extremely high risks, and related trading losses may not be eligible for regulatory relief.This action comes amid reports of Indian users converting stablecoins like USDT into gift cards through platforms in Sweden, Germany, and Singapore to purchase groceries, fuel, and gold in India. Previously, FIU-IND had issued notices to nine major offshore exchanges, including Binance, Kraken, and KuCoin, in December 2023, after which Binance completed its registration and paid a fine of 1.882 billion rupees.
