India’s Financial Intelligence Unit has this week tagged several foreign cryptocurrency platforms as illegal, as they’re not complying with local laws.
The list includes Binance, Kraken, Huobi and six other platforms, which are in non-compliance with the Indian anti-money laundering act. As such, the FIU has asked the IT ministry to block URLs to their respective websites.
Blocking Foreign Crypto Platform
On Thursday, India’s Financial Intelligence Unit, the government agency that scrutinises financial transactions, declared nine foreign cryptocurrency platforms as illegal as they’re not complying with the local anti-money laundering act.
The list includes Binance, Kraken, Huobi, Kucoin, Bittrex, Gate․io, Bitstamp, Bitfinex and MEXC Global, to which the Indian government has issued show cause notices this week. The agency says that most of these platforms have not registered under the local laws, just because they don’t have a physical presence in the country. Yet, they’re serving the Indian citizens by skipping the local Anti Money Laundering(AML) and Counter Financing of Terrorism(CFT) framework.
The Indian government brought cryptocurrencies into the ambit of anti-money laundering and counter-financing of terrorism framework in March this year, to which 31 crypto firms have registered to comply. Some of these include the Binance-partnered WazirX, CoinDCX, and CoinSwitch Kuber, which sign up customers through a rigorous KYC process.
And since foreign platforms are sneaky on this part, many Indian users have switched to foreign platforms to evade taxes – where the country collects a flat 30% fee on all gains and a 1% deduction on each transaction made.
The Financial Intelligence Unit has further directed the IT ministry to block the URLs of the above foreign platforms which will eventually block them from transacting in India.
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