The Central Bank and the Ministry of Justice of Russia returned to discussing the possibilities of blocking one of the largest channels for withdrawing money abroad. They are going to introduce a ban on the transfer of money under orders of execution anywhere outside the Russian jurisdiction, RBC reports.
The corresponding bill is being developed, several sources confirmed at once. If it is accepted, then in order to receive the recovered money, companies or citizens, including non-residents, will have to have an account with a Russian bank.
For the first time, such an idea arose back in the winter of 2019, but after complaints about it, the development was postponed. Work on minimizing funds in favor of “unscrupulous claimants” was confirmed without specifics by both the Ministry of Justice and the Central Bank.
They started talking about the problem itself after the disclosure of the “Moldovan scheme” in 2017. Fraudsters took advantage of the fact that Russian banks were required to transfer funds of the debtor company to a foreign counterparty by a court decision, even if they suspected that it was money laundering. Later, for such a conclusion, they began to use the executive notes of notaries and decisions of the labor dispute commission.
The Central Bank and Rosfinmonitoring recognized the difficulties of dealing with such a scheme. In 2020, the Bank of Russia indicated that its volumes increased 1.9 times over nine months.