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FollowingIndia's Financial Intelligence Agency issues violation notices to 15 offshore cryptocurrency platforms
On September 9, the Indian Financial Intelligence Agency (FIU-IND) issued compliance notices to 15 offshore cryptocurrency platforms in accordance with Articles 13 to 15 of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) and requested the removal of their applications and websites. The list involved in this operation includes Weex, Blofin, Bitunix, DigiFinex, Toobit, Rezorex, XT.com, Latoken, WOOX, Pionex, ChangeNow, SimpleSwap, FixedFloat, WhiteBIT and Guardarian.
The move comes as India's Ministry of Economic Affairs will testify before the Parliament's Standing Committee on Finance on September 16, when it will discuss how India should regulate virtual digital assets. The hearing was originally scheduled to be held on August 27, but was later postponed for some reason. The specific reasons were not publicly explained.
Enforcement actions are closely aligned with the legislative agenda
It is estimated that as of October last year, approximately 91.5% of India's cryptocurrency transactions occurred on offshore platforms, and most of these transactions fell outside the direct supervision of the FIU. Action against 15 offshore trading platforms a week before the hearing was seen as a gesture by the agency to showcase its enforcement record ahead of an upcoming meeting that will mainly discuss the scale of capital outflows.
FIU-IND's request for removal is based on Section 79(3)(b) of the Information Technology Act and the 2025 Amendment to the Information Technology Rules. It is worth noting that some media reports stated that some platforms listed in the same action use the names of their registered legal entities rather than brand names, and that one of the entity names cannot clearly correspond to the platforms in the brand name list. Currently, this discrepancy has not been independently verified or resolved.
This is not the first time that FIU-IND has taken action against offshore exchanges
This is not the first time that FIU-IND has taken action against offshore exchanges. In December 2023, in accordance with the March 2023 rule that requires any provider serving Indian users to register with FIU-IND, FIU-IND issued an explanation notice to nine larger platforms including Binance, Kraken and KuCoin. By January 2024, several of these platforms have been blocked in India. Subsequently, Binance completed its registration and paid a fine of approximately 188.2 million rupees (approximately 2.25 million US dollars), and finally returned to the Indian market.
The goals of this operation have expanded from large exchanges that have been regulated to smaller platforms in the second tier, as well as certain instant redemption services that do not directly hold customer accounts.
Combating the use of stablecoins to circumvent domestic regulations
In addition, the notices followed reports that Indian users used overseas services in Sweden, Germany and Singapore to exchange stablecoins such as USDT for gift cards. These gift cards were subsequently used domestically to purchase groceries, fuel and gold. This approach allows cryptocurrency earnings to go directly into daily consumption without having to go through monitored domestic exchanges. This also reveals broader regulatory loopholes behind the issue of offshore trading volume.
The industry outlook remains unclear
As of now, none of these 15 platforms have been fined. India's cryptocurrencies remain in an uncertain legal status for many years: they are subject to a fixed tax rate of 30% and surcharge, but they are neither banned nor recognized as legal tender. This week's enforcement actions are aimed at clarifying the situation, and the September 16 hearing is expected to bring a clearer regulatory framework rather than another postponement.
