The Director, Financial Intelligence Unit, FIU-IND, has issued notices to 15 Virtual Digital Assets Service Providers for non-compliance with the provisions of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) 2002. These include Bitunix, DigiFinex, Pionex, WhiteBIT, Fixedfloat and Toobit.
The Ministry of Finance said the notices have also been issued to these entities to take down applications and URLs providing public access to services found to be operating illegally in the Country. Virtual Digital Assets Service Providers (VDA SPs) were brought under the Anti-Money Laundering and Countering the Financing of Terrorism framework in March 2023.
The Ministry said that the VDA SPs operating in India, whether offshore or onshore and engaged in activities like exchange between virtual digital assets and fiat currencies and transfer of virtual digital assets, are required to be registered with FIU-IND as a Reporting Entity and comply with the set of obligations as mandated under PMLA. The Ministry clarified that these obligations are activity-based and are not contingent on physical presence of the entity in India.
The Ministry said that, for the safety and awareness of the general public, it is advised that crypto products and Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs) are unregulated and can be highly risky.
