The Central Bank has reduced control over foreign trade operations due to sanctions, Ilya Yasinsky, head of the Bank of Russia’s department of financial monitoring and currency control, told RBC.
Atypical foreign trade transactions are less likely to be viewed by the regulator as attempts to withdraw money abroad. At the same time, the Central Bank can still distinguish trade payments from withdrawals.
As Yasinsky notes, before the entry of the RF Armed Forces into the territory of Ukraine and the crisis, any changes in payment chains by Russian companies were considered suspicious by the regulator. Today, the Bank of Russia adheres to a more loyal approach.
The Central Bank understands that many atypical schemes obey the desire to circumvent the restrictions that are “artificially imposed from abroad,” explains the head of the department.
“Such complex payment schemes are linked to building new supply chains to ensure the importation of the necessary goods. In this part, we loosen our “filters” a bit, Yasinsky said.
Rosfinmonitoring confirmed the described trend. Banks have been able to set up financial monitoring systems to detect suspicious activity from customers, taking into account the new realities.
According to the Central Bank, during the last year the number of suspicious operations with indications of withdrawal of funds abroad was the lowest in the entire monitoring period. Its volume amounted to 36 billion rubles. In this context, the withdrawal of money under import schemes through the member countries of the Customs Union has grown considerably, from 5 billion to 13 billion rubles.
Author:
Natalia Gormaleva
Source: RB
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