The Federal service for financial monitoring (Rosfinmonitoring) has commissioned the development and implementation of software updates to monitor the movement of digital assets. The main objective of the updates of a Single system Agency — timely and uninterrupted delivery of data needed to fight tax evasion, terrorist financing and other illegal activities. On Tuesday, citing internal sources told the BBC Russian service.
The main addition is a mechanism for obtaining and processing information about bitcoin wallets and transactions on the blockchain. The algorithm ordered the Agency not only identifies suspicious transactions, but also finds connections between them. The contractor will deliver the Institute of security and analysis of information (SPI). The total cost of the work under the contract is 195,5 million. Specialists of the Institute were already orders for service; in particular, the Agency uses their analytical program iRule.
Neither the BBC material, nor on the page of the contract on the procurement website does not say on what grounds will be allocated “figures”, what are the criteria of suspicious transactions and how to form connections between them.
The head of the expert group on cryptocurrency Trading-industrial chamber of the Russian Federation Herman Klimenko supported the decision of the Agency, adding that such monitoring is reasonable:
“Crypto-currencies due to their anonymity and the inability to find the “ends” are used for gray schemes. In darknet — to buy weapons, drugs, videos with scenes of violence. Legislators in many countries are wary of this phenomenon: it was confirmed by the analysis we conducted on behalf of the President”.
Cryptocurrency expert and chief editor of one of profile editions Anton Merkurov, on the contrary, considers that the authorities thus will cause a negative response of developers to the relevant blockchains, and projects that voluntarily provide data about transactions, completely block third-party access to any information.
“Instead of catching conditional Colonel Zakharchenko [the police officer from whom at a search found about 9 billion rubles, which the authorities are trying under the microscope in a drop of water to find some kind of microbe. This should not be a priority. And most importantly, start there to press the opposition, invent real tools for laundering”, — summed Mercury.
Thus, according to the current edition of the draft law “On digital of financial assets” (adopted in the first reading), cryptocurrency circulation in the territory of the Russian Federation are legally possible only within the network of specialised operators, which may be only legal entities. It is possible that, with implementation of system updates Rosfinmonitoring this restriction will be revised. Recall that the second reading of the draft will be held during the autumn session.
