Ministry of Finance
In an interview with Bloomberg, Deputy Finance Minister Alexei Moiseyev said that the regulator counts on legalizing operations with Bitcoins in 2018. This is for the sole purpose of clearly identifying users.
“The state should know who is at each moment of time on both sides of the financial chain,” Moiseev said. “If a transaction occurs, then its participants should understand who they are buying from and to whom they are selling, as well as in banking transactions.”
Now the Ministry of Finance is coordinating its position on crypto-currencies with other interested agencies, the press service reported.
The Bank of Russia has been fighting money laundering for many years. The problem is very serious: according to the assessment of the Washington-based Global Financial Integrity company, from 1994 to 2011, at least $ 211.5 billion was expelled from Russia within the framework of criminal schemes, bribes and tax evasion – the country was literally devastated. As part of the fight against criminal schemes, the Bank of Russia over the past years has stripped hundreds of “pocket” banks of licenses. As a result, the volume of fake transactions and loans with money laundering with the withdrawal of foreigners in 2016 fell to a record low level of $ 771 million
But it’s too early to rejoice. There is reason to believe that more advanced mechanisms are being used to launder money with withdrawal abroad, which are beyond the Central Bank’s field of vision. Crypto currency is one such mechanism. To take into account and control the Central Bank’s crypto currency, it has already stated its position that digital currencies should be officially recognized as assets, cash or securities.
In December 2016, the head of the department is the director of the department of financial technologies, projects and organization of processes Bank of Russia Vadim Kalukhov said that too strict measures of regulation kriptovalyut ineffective, because they only supplant transactions outside of Russia, so that they will become more difficult to control. At the same time, he noted that the total value of all issued crypto-currencies in the world now does not exceed $ 15 billion. This is obviously too small for the scale of thefts and capital withdrawals that are observed in Russia.
In February 2017, the deputy chairman Bank of Russia, Olga Skorobogatova expressed the opinion that the state should monitor the emission of electronic currencies: “All regulators came to the conclusion that if we talk about e-currency, we need to talk about it as a national currency. When the issue is controlled, when the players understand who is behind this, when the risks are weighed, and when the clients and citizens absolutely clearly understand that this is guaranteed by the state, “the Central Bank said.
