Alexander Bayazitov, a journalist and author of the Infernal Babki blog, talks about what is behind the officials' words about the liberalization of the anti-money laundering law.
From July 15, new rules for the control of suspicious transactions and blocking of accounts come into force. Now the amount for monitoring for individuals has been officially reduced to 300 thousand rubles, and the period for spying on a suspicious client has been extended for a year. And most importantly, banks should now provide information on all suspicious transactions automatically: to financial monitoring and the tax service. Now, if you buy an apartment, but there is no official income, tax authorities can ask you for sources and block your accounts.
Several times officials have postponed the date of the new rules under the anti-money laundering law, but there is nowhere else to postpone: from June 15, the list of operations subject to mandatory control is expanding, and the submission of reports by banks becomes automatic: they must promptly and without exceptions report about controlled operations.
In particular, now banks are required to report information not only about the amount of a suspicious transaction and the card number, but also information about the cardholder. Any cash withdrawals from bank cards issued by foreign banks automatically become suspicious. And since most of the operating ATMs in Russia do not know how to read information about the holder of a foreign card, it is highly likely that banks will simply prohibit accepting any foreign cards. No operation - no problem, no fine from the Central Bank.
Now the bank has three working days to report a real estate transaction. Moreover, information about such a transaction will automatically go not only to the financial intelligence and the Central Bank, but also to the tax service. And then the tax authorities already have every reason to demand documents on the transaction, for example, if you have not officially worked anywhere in recent years. And if the documents are not presented, then get an extract from the state register and additionally charge taxes to the seller (if the apartment is sold earlier than 5 years from the date of purchase or sold below the cadastral value), and demand that the buyer submit a tax return.
Notaries and realtors are now obliged to report any of your transactions to the competent authorities. And the responsibility here is even stricter than that of the bank: if he did not report it, the license was automatically revoked.
In short, there are more and more reasons to block your bank account. And this is against the background of verbal assurances from officials about plans to soften the law and protect law-abiding citizens and firms from the arbitrariness of banks. In 2017 alone, 700,000 accounts were blocked as suspicious. However, the laws are becoming stricter, and there are more and more chances to stay with a piece of plastic instead of a card.
Alexandra Bayazitova
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