Since the second quarter of 2021, the Bank of Russia has been tightening the criteria for the involvement of credit institutions in suspicious transactions. The regulator lowers the threshold for the volume of suspicious transactions from 1 billion rubles to 500 million rubles per quarter. This was reported on the website of the Central Bank on Wednesday, April 14.
“The bank will be considered involved in suspicious transactions with non-cash and cash funds, if their volume exceeds 0.5 billion rubles per quarter. At present, this threshold is 1 billion rubles, it was established in 2017, “the message says.
The Central Bank believes that the introduction of new criteria will stimulate banks to more thoroughly identify and suppress dubious transactions. In addition, it aims to further reduce the volume of such transactions.
According to the Central Bank, the volume of suspicious transactions has been declining over the past few years. Financial institutions are now generally in compliance with established thresholds.
Thus, in 2016–2020, the volume of money withdrawn abroad on dubious grounds decreased four times, to 52 billion rubles, and cash withdrawals in the banking sector – seven times, to 78 billion rubles.
At the end of March, the regulator said that by the end of 2020, the volume of dubious transactions in the Russian banking sector fell by 26%. Compared to 2019, the withdrawal of money abroad for making transactions of a dubious nature in advertising services, as well as in securities, decreased by 21%, while their withdrawal fell by 30%.
In early March, it was reported that the Central Bank plans to move to control only dubious currency transactions as part of the process of expanding the rights of currency legislation in the country.