India’s Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU-India) has issued show-cause notices to nine offshore cryptocurrency platforms, including Binance, the Finance Ministry said on Thursday. Besides Binance, notice has been issued to Kucoin, Huobi, Kraken, Gate.io, Bittrex, Bitstamp, MEXC Global, and Bitfinex.

“Director FIU IND has written to Secretary, Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology to block the URLs of said entities that are operating illegally without complying with the provisions of the PML Act in India,” the finance ministry said in a statement. 

The virtual digital asset service providers operating in India (both offshore and onshore) and engaged in activities like exchange between virtual digital assets and fiat currencies, transfer of virtual digital assets, safekeeping or administration of digital assets are required to be registered with FIU IND as reporting entity and comply with the set of obligations as mandated under the PMLA Act 2002.

The obligation is activity-based and is not contingent on physical presence in India, the ministry said.