Apple has reportedly removed three offshore crypto exchanges, Kucoin, Binance and OKX from its App Store in India. This happened after a show-cause notice was served by the finance ministry to nine VDAs or virtual digital asset service providers, last month.
The show-cause notices were issued by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (Meity) on December 28, 2023 to the VDAs for not obeying the money laundering laws of the country. Binance, Houbi, Kraken, Kucoin, Bitstamp, Bittrex, Gate.io, MEXC Global and Bitfinex were served the notice for ‘illegally operating,’ in India without registering and not abiding by the local tax rules. The Information Technology Ministry has also been asked by the Finance Ministry to have the URLs of such exchanges blocked.
Reportedly, according to the statement of the finance ministry, the offshore and onshore VDA service providers in the country and indulging in exchanges between fiat currencies and virtual digital assets, transfer and administration of VDAs or instruments allowing control over them mandatorily need to register with Financial Intelligence Unit-India, which is a national agency responsible for receiving, analysing and disseminating information. The VDAs also have to abide by the provisions of the PMLA or Prevention of Money Laundering Act, 2002.
