Russian banks recommended to avoid dealing with Belarus

The Central Bank of Russia has taken new steps in the struggle with fictitious imports from Belarus.

Previous measures taken to prevent funds outflow from Russia via the schemes of fictitious imports from the Customs Union countries have not brought a result. In the situation when the cases of assets withdrawal “keep being registered”, the Central Bank has radically changed the rhetoric of their communication with bankers. Now the monetary regulator insists on tougher measures – principled refusal of Russian banks to carry out this kind of dubious operations for clients, Kommersant reports.

Central Bank’s letter with new recommendations for Russian banks on fighting fictitious Belarusian and Kazakh imports was published on 14 August in “Russia Bank Herald”. The reasons for the document’s emergence are also given in the letter: cases keep taking place, when clients of Russian banks of Russian residence transfer payments for goods from Belarus and Kazakhstan to the banks, located under different jurisdictions.

Such operations “do not have obvious economic meaning and an obvious legitimate purpose”, the Central Bank reminds commercial banks. Owing to that circumstance Russian banks need to apply the paragraph 11 of the article 7 of the law. The new edition of the paragraph, which has been in force for around a month, gives banks the right to refuse carrying out dubious operations to clients, even in the cases, when a client submits the necessary documents.

Although the yet another recommendation letter from the Central Bank is of a recommendation nature, its rhetoric is significantly tougher than before, experts point out.

“As a matter of fact, this is a direct ban of such operations, ignoring it is fraught with sanctions on the part of the monetary regulator”, - the head of one of the top-200 bank’s internal control service points out.

We would remind that in June media reported of a “Belarusian scheme”, which provided for around a quarter of the total outflow of assets from Russia.

Only in 2012 such schemes provided for withdrawing $15 billion – over a quarter of the country’s net outflow of assets. The widely announced struggle with the phenomenon has not brought any results so far. The leadership of the Customs Union, Central Bank, commercial bankers, Rosfinmonitoring and law enforcement agencies all tried to blame the others of the failure.

Photo Lee Jin-man | AP