Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday will hold a meeting on issues of counteracting illegal financial operations.
The Kremlin press service reported that the meeting would focus on “measures aimed at improving the national legislation in the sphere of counteracting money laundering and terrorism financing, improving co-ordination of action of Russia’s Federal Financial Monitoring Service (Rosfinmonitoring), the Bank of Russia and law enforcement agencies to expose illegal transactions in the banking sector.”
It is also planned to consider issues of strengthening international co-operation in matters of countering illegal financial operations with the member states of the Customs Union and the Eurasian Economic Union that is currently at the stage of formation.
Taking part in the meeting will be senior officers of the RF presidential administration, government, Central Bank and law enforcement agencies.
Putin will also visit the Rosfinmonitoring Centre for Risk Assessment of Money Laundering and Terrorism Financing, which was established by Presidential Executive Order in June 2012. Putin has issues an order to create next month the Interdepartmental Working Group on combating illegal financial operations. It will comprise 16 people – representatives of the RF Interior Ministry, Prosecutor General’s Office, Investigative Committee, Federal tax Service, Federal Customs Service, Federal Drug Control Service, Federal Financial Markets Service, Central Bank and Finance Ministry. The group’s task is to ensure interaction of the state bodies and RF Central Bank in the sphere of the prevention, detection and suppression of illegal financial operations, combating illegal export of capital and use of capital in shadow transactions. Its other tasks are monitoring of the law enforcement practice on these issues and preparation of proposals on the improvement of the legal regulation.
In particular, media reported in December 2012 that the group was engaged in the creation of the common database of companies involved in illegal financial operations. The black list of companies was published on the Central Bank’s website in February 2013. The group also took part in the preparation of a package of amendments aimed at the ‘deoffshorisation’ of the economy. Delivering his state-of-the nation address to the Federal Assembly (both houses of the national parliament) in December 2012, Putin emphasised the need to adopt these amendments. The document, adopted in June 2013, opened to the tax officials access to the information on accounts of individuals. The working group has also the task to check the state officials’ declarations of income and spending.