Russia to draw up national plan against money laundering - Putin
MOSCOW. June 27 (Interfax) - Russian President Vladimir Putin has instructed Yury Chikhanchin, the chief of the Russian Financial Monitoring Service (Rosfinmonitoring), to engage in making up a national plan to counter money laundering and tax evasion.
"We will need to draw up our national plan, as is done in other countries, at least in many countries, on countering money laundering and tax evasion and de-offshoring - to understand who the ultimate beneficiary of this or that company is," Putin said at a meeting with Chikhanchin.
"We need to do this big job, and I really expect your agency to make its significant contribution to it as well. It would be impossible to draw up such a national plan without your agency, and therefore I ask you to join this work from the very start," he said.
Putin noted that from July 1 Russia will chair the international organization FATF, which fights money laundering, and he asked Chikhanchin what he thought the priorities of this chairmanship were.
"The first and most important task is not to lose the level, or bar, which the international community has set," and also to introduce new standards, Chikhanchin said.
He spoke about the new law on countering illegal financial operations and the establishment of a mega-regulator through the Central Bank of Russia, saying this will enable solutions in this area.
FATF also faces a challenge in the discovery of end beneficiaries. "This is a very complex difficult task. To some extent it will resolve the de-offshoring issue," he said.
"The second block of questions involves financial accessibility or expansion of financial services in electronic form. This will give us the chance to somewhat reduce cash turnover. But we also need to take into account the fact that the criminal world is not standing idle: it is making extensive use of e-wallets, Yandex-Dengi, and we must work with all ministries and departments on new measures and new approaches," he said.
The third question the service intends to pay attention to is the strengthening of regional groups that are like FATF.