Apple has removed three offshore crypto exchanges such as: Binance, Kucoin and OKX from its app store in India. This comes after the Treasury Department sent a flagship notice to nine such virtual digital asset service providers (VDAs) late last month. On December 28, 2023, the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (Meity) issued showpiece notices to nine crypto VDAs for non-compliance with the country's money laundering laws.
The Citation Notice was sent to Binance, Kucoin, Houbi, Kraken, Gate.io, Bittrex, Bitstamp, MEXC Global and Bitfinex for operating illegally in India by failing to register and comply with local tax regulations. The Finance Ministry had directed the Ministry of Information Technology to block the URLs of these exchanges.
As of now, these apps will continue to appear in Google's Play Store. It is very likely that they will also be removed from the Google Play Store.
What Meity said in his explanation about blocking URLsIn a statement released, the Ministry of Finance said that offshore and onshore virtual digital asset service providers operating in India and engaged in activities such as exchanges between virtual digital assets and fiat currencies and the transfer and management of virtual digital assets or instruments, those involved in enabling control of these must register with the Financial Intelligence Unit-India and comply with the provisions of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA), 2002.
For those who don't know, the Financial Intelligence Unit-India is the national agency responsible for receiving, analyzing and disseminating information on suspicious financial transactions to law enforcement agencies and their foreign partners.
The Citation Notice was sent to Binance, Kucoin, Houbi, Kraken, Gate.io, Bittrex, Bitstamp, MEXC Global and Bitfinex for operating illegally in India by failing to register and comply with local tax regulations. The Finance Ministry had directed the Ministry of Information Technology to block the URLs of these exchanges.
As of now, these apps will continue to appear in Google's Play Store. It is very likely that they will also be removed from the Google Play Store.
What Meity said in his explanation about blocking URLsIn a statement released, the Ministry of Finance said that offshore and onshore virtual digital asset service providers operating in India and engaged in activities such as exchanges between virtual digital assets and fiat currencies and the transfer and management of virtual digital assets or instruments, those involved in enabling control of these must register with the Financial Intelligence Unit-India and comply with the provisions of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA), 2002.
For those who don't know, the Financial Intelligence Unit-India is the national agency responsible for receiving, analyzing and disseminating information on suspicious financial transactions to law enforcement agencies and their foreign partners.
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