NEW DELHI: Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU), a government agency that tracks money laundering and financial crimes, has sent official warning notices to 15 foreign cryptocurrency exchanges, the agency said on Wednesday.
Since March 2023, any company that lets people buy, sell, store, or transfer cryptocurrency called virtual digital assets (VDA) has to register with the FIU, even if the company is based outside India.
The federal probing agency said that the notices were issued under Section 13 of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA), 2002. Moreover, the FIU has also separately ordered the takedown of the entities' apps and URLs for public access in India.
The 15 entities named are Weex (Weex International Exchange Ltd), Blofin (BLF Global Ltd), Rezorex, Bitunix (Bitunix LLC), DigiFinex (DigiFinex Ltd), Toobit (Hopeful Technology Co. Ltd), XT.com (Fibtc Ltd/XT Technical Pte. Ltd), Latoken (LAtrade Ltd), WOO X (Wootech Ltd), Pionex (Marketa Trading Inc.), ChangeNow (CHN Group LLC), SimpleSwap (SimpleSwap Ltd), Fixedfloat (FFGX Group LLC), WhiteBIT (UAB Clear White Technologies) and Guardarian (FinSeven CZ).
VDA service providers were brought under anti money laundering/counter financing of terrorism framework in March 2023.
The entities engaged in activities such as exchange between virtual assets and fiat currency, transfer of virtual assets, or safekeeping and administration of virtual assets are required to register with the FIU as reporting entities, regardless of whether they are physically based in India, the agency said.
The agency reiterated that crypto products and non-fungible tokens (NFTs) remain unregulated in India and carry high risk, with no regulatory recourse available for losses arising from such transactions.
