Nabiullina: Responsibility of banks for effective use of anti-fraud meausure should be increased

MOSCOW. April 8 (Interfax) - The Central Bank of Russia (CBR) wants to increase the liability of banks for effective use of anti-fraud measures, and is considering including economic incentives, Central Bank chief Elvira Nabiullina said in the State Duma during consideration of the CBR's 2023 report.

"We have the ability to control anti-fraud procedures, but we must increase responsibility, that is, it should be serious, economically, fines and so on, so that financial institutions are invested in building these procedures," Nabiullina said.

According to her, it is also necessary to introduce liability for dropperism (cashing out funds received from fraud victims).

"Here it's not only information work that is very important, it seems to me, so that people understand what they are involved in, but also liability. In many countries there is liability, and we are discussing with the relevant organizations, we support liability being introduced for dropperism," Nabiullina said.

Earlier, the head of the Central Bank said that banks need to establish a better exchange of data on droppers. FinCERT was considered as a possible platform for such exchange.

FinCERT is a center for monitoring and responding to computer attacks in the lending and financial sector, a special structural unit of the Bank of Russia (from CERT - computer emergency response team).

According to the Central Bank, fraudsters stole 15.8 billion rubles from bank customers in 2023 (14.2 billion rubles in 2022). Banks were able to return 1.4 billion rubles (or 8.7% of the total amount of stolen funds), which is twice as much as in 2022.