India's crypto industry body, the Bharat Web3 Association (BWA) recently met with stakeholders from India's Web3 industry. The purpose of this meeting was to open dialogues on the steps that could prevent the misuse of cryptocurrencies for illegal activities such as money laundering and terrorist financing. The BWA has called for a collaborative effort by India's Web3 community to create a strong anti-money laundering framework to ensure that crypto transactions, which are largely anonymous, are not leveraged to facilitate criminal activities.
This meeting marked BWA's first training and sensitization workshop on the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA). In India, all companies related to crypto are required to comply with the PMLA. According to this law, crypto companies, including exchanges, must obtain KYC from every new user who registers on their platforms. In addition, crypto companies are also expected to track the activities that are processed through their platform and report all suspicious activities to law enforcement authorities.
Dilip Chenoy, the president of the BWA, joined other Web3 industry leaders to discuss ways that could prevent crypto assets from being used to facilitate illegal transactions. Some of the main ideas discussed at the meeting to ensure the safe and legal use of crypto-assets include peer-to-peer learning, strong compliance guidelines, appointment of independent compliance officers, implementation of self-regulation for actors of the sector and improvement of the general regulatory comparative assessment. .
Sumit Gupta, the CEO of CoinDCX, posted his experience of this session with the BWA on social media.
“It was a great success. Vivek Aggarwal, Director, FIU-IND, was the keynote speaker and emphasized the importance of collaboration to build a strong AML framework. The workshop proved to be a very engaging and productive forum, which fostered lively discussions and a collaborative exchange of ideas,” noted Gupta.
Another highlight of the event included the launch of a BWA report titled — The Road to Reporting Entity Status under PMLA: The Journey of Indian VASPs.
According to Gupta, “This report will serve as a key resource within the VDA sector and beyond, highlighting the critical role of compliance in facilitating the growth and acceptance of VDAs in India.”
Rohan Bhandari, Head of Compliance at CoinDCX and Muthuswamy Iyer, Senior Director at WazirX were among others who marked their attendance at BWA's PMLA training session.
