Binance Successfully Registers with FIU-IND, Continues Compliance Journey

Months after nine offshore exchanges in India were shut down for violating local anti-money laundering laws, Binance, the biggest cryptocurrency exchange in the world, registered with the Financial Intelligence Unit in India (FIU-IND).

However, as the compliance procedures are still ongoing, this registration is only the first stage. Once these procedures are finished and a penalty cost has been decided upon, the exchange will only be operational in India.

Binance’s registration follows rival KuCoin’s March registration in close succession. OKX, however, decided to stop offering its services in India as of April 30.

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In his first-ever interview with the media, Vivek Aggarwal, director of FIU-IND and additional secretary in the Department of Revenue, stated that the Binance procedures were still underway because a penalty had not yet been determined.

The amount of the fine has not yet been determined, and Binance’s activities have not yet resumed. As of now, Binance has finished the FIU-IND first registration process. Aggarwal also said, during a session organized on May 10 in New Delhi by the trade association Bharat Web3 Association (BWA), “Its penalty and compliance proceedings are still ongoing.”

FIU-IND representatives, BWA members, and sixty representatives from 35 other REs attended the session. One of the program’s participants was Kucoin, the first foreign exchange company to register with FIU-IND. Other participants among them were the founders and top executives of CoinDCX, CoinSwitch, WazirX, Mudrex, Unocoin, Pi42, and Giottus, who emphasized the importance of PMLA compliance for the participants in the virtual digital asset market. 

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By the end of December, it was discovered that about nine offshore exchanges, including KuCoin, Binance, OKX, and Houbi, were not registered with the FBI-IND and did not adhere to the guidelines set forth by the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA), 2002.

In January of that year, the Indian government issued an order to restrict the URLs of these exchanges. Their applications were even removed from the Google and Apple app stores.