India's Financial Intelligence Unit issues compliance notices to offshore crypto exchanges including Binance, Kraken

India's Financial Intelligence Unit, an agency that monitors and regulates suspicious financial activity, issued compliance notices to nine offshore crypto exchanges and asked the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology to block their websites in the country.

The affected exchanges include Binance, Kucoin, Huobi, Kraken, Gate.io, Bittrex, Bitstamp, MEXC Global and Bitfinex. The FIU said in a statement that they were operating illegally without complying with provisions of the country's Prevention of Money Laundering Act.

The notice

"Virtual Digital Asset Service Providers (VDA SPs) 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 are required to be registered with FIU IND as Reporting Entity and comply with the set of obligations as mandated under Prevention of Money Laundering Act 2002," according to the statement.

"The obligation is activity-based and is not contingent on physical presence in India," the statement continued. "The regulation casts reporting, record keeping and other obligations on the VDA SPs under the PML Act which also includes registration with the FIU IND."

While 31 providers have registered with the agency, the FIU said that offshore entities "catering to a substantial part of Indian users" had not registered.