The Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU) under the Finance Ministry has issued show-cause notices to nine offshore cryptocurrency and virtual digital assets platforms, like Binance and Kucoin, for non-compliance with anti-money laundering law. The FIU has also written to the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology to block the URLs of these nine entities that are operating illegally without complying with the provisions of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA), 2002. 

Apart from Binance and Kucoin, the other virtual digital assets service providers who have been issued notice for not registering as reporting entities with the FIU-India are Huobi, Kraken, Gate.io, Bittrex, Bitstamp, MEXC Global and Bitfenex. 

The virtual digital assets service providers operating in India (both offshore and onshore) and engaged in activities like exchange between virtual digital assets and fiat currencies, transfer of virtual digital assets, safekeeping or administration of virtual digital assets or instruments enabling control over virtual digital assets, etc are required to be registered with FIU-India as reporting entity and comply with the set of obligations as mandated under the PMLA, 2002.

The obligation is activity based and not contingent on physical presence in India. 

The regulation casts reporting, record-keeping, and other obligations on the virtual digital assets service providers under the PMLA, 2002, which also includes registration with the FIU-India, the Finance Ministry has said.