India’s crypto industry body, the Bharat Web3 Association (BWA) recently met with the stakeholders of India’s Web3 industry. The aim of this meeting was to open dialogues on the steps that could prevent the misuse of cryptocurrencies for unlawful activities like money laundering and terror financing. The BWA has called for a collaborative effort from India’s Web3 community to create a strong anti-money laundering framework that would ensure that crypto transactions, that are largely anonymous, are not exploited to facilitate criminal activities.

This meeting marked BWA’s first ever training and awareness workshop on the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA). In India, all crypto-related firms are mandated to comply with the PMLA. Under this law, crypto firms including exchanges are required to get the KYCs of every new user signing up on their platforms. In addition, crypto firms are also expected to keep a track of activities being processed through their platform and report all suspicious ones to the law enforcement authorities.

Dilip Chenoy, the chairperson of the BWA joined other leaders from the Web3 industry to touch upon ways that could prevent crypto assets being used to facilitate unlawful transactions. Some of the top ideas discussed in the meeting to ensure safe and legal usage of crypto assets included peer-to-peer learning, strong compliance guidelines, appointing independent compliance officers, rolling out self-regulations for industry players, and finetuning the overall regulatory benchmarking.

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, served as the keynote speaker and emphasized the importance of collaboration in building a strong AML framework. The workshop proved to be a highly engaging and productive forum, fostering lively discussions and a collaborative exchange of ideas,” Gupta noted.

Another highlight from the event included the launch of a report by the BWA titled — The Path to Reporting Entity Status under PMLA: The Journey of Indian VASPs.

As per 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, WazirX were among others who marked their attendance at BWA’s PMLA training session.