The Central Bank of Russia (CBR) has published a new set of rules on suspicious transactions, announced the Russian financial newspaper RBC on 17th February. This update broadly classifies every cryptocurrency-linked transaction as a potential money laundering risk.
The Bank issued an update to directive 375-P in which it lists all signs of suspicious activity that may be linked to money laundering. This is the first such update since 2012, when the original regulations were introduced.
The manual was developed in cooperation with the Federal Financial Supervisory Service (Rosfinmonitoring). A representative of the central bank explained that it was done in order to "add new patterns of conducting atypical operations, taking into account contemporary events on financial markets.
The head of the central bank said earlier that the number of possible risk factors should be reduced. As in other countries, if a bank or other financial services provider considers certain transactions to be suspicious, it may freeze the suspect's account or close it completely in serious cases.
Although this list could have been consolidated, regulators have added a broad clause that considers any cryptokurrency related activity as a potential risk.
Within the same framework, cash operations require several reservations in order to be considered suspicious. For example, if a natural person regularly distributes most of the cash received from a legal person.
For crypto currencies, any activity that can be identified as buying or selling those currencies will be considered a money laundering risk. This generally includes deposits and withdrawals from known exchanges.
This move is due to the fact that Russian legislators continue to amend the Digital Financial Assets Act, which was proposed in early 2018. It seems that the position of the regulators with regard to the crypto-fursa has recently changed for the worse, as nationwide bans on using it for payment purposes are being considered.
