Rosfinmonitoring warned banks about the risks of withdrawing money through the markets

Financial intelligence has begun to record instances of online trading platforms being used for illegal withdrawals. According to a representative of Rosfinmonitoring, in such schemes, exchanges are used to break the transit chains.

The number of cases of questionable transactions by companies and individual entrepreneurs trading on online platforms has increased, RBC’s interlocutor at a major Russian bank confirmed. According to the source, since the end of August, such clients have become increasingly “colored” by the Central Bank’s anti-money laundering system “Know Your Customer” (KYC).

A representative of the Central Bank told the publication that the regulator records isolated and unsystematic cases of suspicious transactions of clients of credit institutions who allegedly operate under the guise of sellers on online platforms. Such operations can be considered one of the ways to “avoid banking anti-money laundering” and KYC procedures, the source of the publication clarified.

Larisa Zalomikhina, head of Sberbank’s compliance department, told RBC that the company does not see a significant increase in the number of sellers whose operations would require investigation.

VTB confirmed to the publication that they received recommendations from Rosfinmonitoring and have been using them for a long time, while the credit institution does not observe an increase in the ratio of “yellow” and “red” clients in KYC, their number at VTB is at a consistently low level.

According to Elena Vinogradova, Head of Products at Blank Credit Organization, despite the increase in the number of sellers, the company has not seen an increase in the share of “yellow” and “red” clients in this segment.

Ozon (the group, in addition to the marketplace, includes Ozon Bank) did not detect an increase in suspicious activity from sellers. Wildberries is continuously monitoring, but has not “observed any anomalies recently” either.

Yandex, which owns Yandex Market and Yandex Bank, did not respond to RBC’s request.

KYS started operating in July 2022, all credit organizations are connected to the system. On a daily basis, the platform analyzes the transactions of bank clients (legal entities and individual entrepreneurs) and assigns them certain risk levels for dubious transactions: green, yellow or red.

Credit institutions use data from the Central Bank, but they also mark their clients by risk level according to their own internal anti-money laundering rules. The higher the risk level, the stricter the control over transactions.