Vladimir Putin held a meeting with Director of the Federal Financial Monitoring Service Yuri Chikhanchin. The issues of countering illegal activities in the financial sector and international cooperation in this area were discussed.
Vladimir Putin: Yuri Anatolyevich, good afternoon!
You are welcome.
Yu.Chikhanchin: I would like to report on how the work of the anti-washing national system is organized in the modern period.
Vladimir Putin: You are welcome.
Yu.Chikhanchin: A few points. What is happening on the international platform? On the FATF platform, it is an intergovernmental organization that deals with issues of countering money laundering and terrorist financing.
Our activities have been suspended, we are only allowed to work in the regional Eurasian group, which includes China, India, Central Asian republics, and Belarus in addition to us. And the opponents are taking steps to completely exclude us from the FATF and include us in the “black lists”. But we are working together – with ministries and departments. We still manage to prove that this is a technical platform, and the Russian Federation meets all standards from the point of view of the national anti-washing system.
A similar situation is developing on the second international platform – the Egmont group, which unites the financial intelligence services of about 170 countries. There is also an attempt to exclude it, but the countries still do not accept this decision. Our membership was suspended and disconnected from the Egmont network, which does not allow us to receive the requested information online.
But we are looking for other options, channels. Moreover, at the time of suspension, we worked with more than 50 countries, conducted almost 700 financial investigations and about 230 criminal cases.
Therefore, such an action, in our opinion, is only for the benefit of the criminal world. Moreover, we are now conducting materials with the FSB, where Russian citizens and foreigners have created a so-called call center, and under the guise of charity in one of the European countries, more than a hundred people have fraudulently received money. We have made a request to this country – there are no answers – twice already. And we understand that such an action is only in the hands of criminals. But we continue the work anyway.
In October, thank you, the CIS heads of State signed an agreement on the establishment of an International Risk Assessment Center. It has already earned. We analyzed all criminal cases with colleagues from the CIS countries and identified the countries where the criminals withdrew money, banks, as well as counterparties. And today we are working on these countries, we have already started several dozen financial investigations, it works.
But this analysis allowed us to identify countries and banks with increased attention, bring them to ministries and departments and to strategic enterprises so that they take this into account as risks. Look [in the presentation], the dynamics just went down sharply with these countries, with these banks.
Of course, our opponents ask questions that our anti-washing system is ineffective, and they are deeply mistaken here, I can say with confidence. Indeed, in 2022 we had some problems when sanctions were imposed on Russian banks, and some of the customers moved to small, small, regional banks.
A lot of work has been done here together with the Central Bank, and today we can say that financial institutions and financial organizations in the country are quite law-abiding, about 90 percent of them are law-abiding. We continue to work with ten percent. And this created mechanism made it possible only this year to prevent about 320 billion from entering the shadow turnover. This is due to joint actions with the Central Bank and the fact that they have created a “Know Your Customer” mechanism together with us.
10 shadow sites have been liquidated to date with a turnover of 28 billion and about one and a half thousand criminal cases have been initiated – or work is underway – together with the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the FSB and By the Investigative Committee. 11 billion have already been collected in the budget.
Work is underway to curb fraud in the financial markets – these are primarily pseudo-brokers, financial pyramids. And there are two features here. The first feature is that almost all of them are in the Internet space, it is very difficult to identify them, but we are working. And the second is the involvement now of a large number of so–called drops, who voluntarily transfer their installation data to conduct shadow schemes for some small reward. And when people don’t know, they just buy it. The growth has tripled this year.
But the most unpleasant thing is that a lot of young people have appeared, and by participating in such schemes, they break their lives and credit history. That is, it will already be difficult for them to open bank accounts, get loans, and so on. But together with law enforcement agencies, 14 financial pyramids were stopped first of all, 380 criminal cases were initiated against the organizers and participants of these transactions, two billion were seized.
And another mechanism began to work well. Last time I reported to you that there were attempts to involve the courts.
Vladimir Putin: And illegal collection of money through the courts?
Yu.Chikhanchin: Yes, fictitious documents are presented. Today, the methodology has been worked out with the courts, and this year they have not allowed 94 billion into the shadow turnover. That is, very good…
Vladimir Putin: That is, they did not give the money to take away, in fact.
Yu. Chikhanchin: Yes.
Work continues on the turnover of cryptocurrencies. Taking into account the fact that the system is not fully regulated, there is an increase in suspicious transactions by about two times. And this is mainly due to drugs, fraud and corruption.
Vladimir Putin: Money laundering from drug sales?
Yu.Chikhanchin: Yes. And, unfortunately, terrorism is also used here.
But thanks to the software product that you approved, we, together with VTB Bank, launched a so–called transparent one – it gives us the opportunity to still conduct investigations on these cases related to cryptocurrency. Moreover, about seven thousand law enforcement officers and other interested agencies are now connected to this transparent blockchain. And we have already connected six countries, that is, they also use it. This makes it possible to initiate criminal cases.
I would like to say a few words about our work related to the budget. Thank you, you once supported the so-called treasury banking support. This makes it possible for us to monitor somewhere more than one and a half million different contracts.
Vladimir Putin: For the amount?
Yuri Chikhanchin: The amount is about 6.5 trillion rubles, what we are tracking.
As a result, we managed to get the results together with the Bank of Russia and law enforcement agencies. In particular, illegal trade procedures with the FAS were suppressed by almost 30 billion, budget funds were also saved by 30 billion and criminal cases were initiated jointly with the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the FSB, the Investigative Committee on the budget alone – about a thousand cases. And about 190 billion rubles have already been reimbursed to the budget.
In terms of efficiency, together with the Central Bank and the Tax Service, we managed to reduce cashing out, such a phenomenon, by 20 percent with budgetary funds and the use of one-day firms by about 10 percent.
Similar work is underway on GOZ, and 6.5 billion rubles have already been saved this year alone. I must say that the mechanisms are running, they are giving their meaning, there are fewer and fewer crimes in GOZA. But most importantly, we have achieved a reduction in overdue accounts receivable.
Vladimir Putin: In front of the Ministry of Defense?
Yu.Chikhanchin: Yes. Together with the Ministry of Defense, the Prosecutor General’s Office, the FSB, the dynamics is shown here [in the presentation], it has tripled since 2020, this year alone 43 large contracts have been closed – a total of 50 billion rubles.
We continue to work in new regions, and this treasury banking support has also been launched here: in total, we control almost 1.7 trillion rubles in turnover and about a hundred different funds that provide recovery assistance.
Here, work is being closely conducted with [Marat] Khusnullin’s team and the commission. As a result, embezzlement in the amount of about 14.5 billion rubles has already been prevented and criminal cases have been initiated.
We are continuing our work, or rather, we have started work, within the framework of your Decree on the mandatory sale of foreign currency by Russian exporters, where work is actively underway together with the Government, with the Ministry of Finance, with the Ministry of Economic Development and with the currency control authorities represented by the [Central] Bank.
What have we managed to do? Firstly, the coordination is led by the First Deputy Prime Minister [Andrey] Belousov. We have already created a personal account for working with exporters, the procedure for interaction of authorized persons has been defined, the Decree defines authorized persons with exporters, the methodology for [monitoring]the mandatory sale of currency has been approved, it is working, and monitoring parameters have been defined. That is, all the “heads” and subsidiaries, including non-residents, have been singled out. And we are setting up an anti-money laundering system for a mechanism for monitoring foreign exchange earnings. All banks have been identified. I must say that in general we have done a lot of work.
Vladimir Putin: Has the number of banks increased now?
Yu.Chikhanchin: Yes, there are about 300 banks today, as of today.
We do a lot of work with exporters, we meet constantly, thanks to the RSPP, [Alexander] Shokhin, we meet together. In general, I must say that all exporters have the right understanding. There are some nuances, we have already come to the materials, to the investigation, but this is a working mechanism. Your Decree on additional numbers has been signed. We will run it all.
We are working on improving financial literacy and financial security. Here, together with the Government, the committee for the Olympiad [on financial security]was created, [Dmitry] Chernyshenko heads the Government, the Ministry of Education, the Ministry of Education primarily help us, of course, our International Training Center, financial institutions – the Financial University, RUDN first of all, MEPhI. The Olympiad has already brought together 19 countries this year. You took part.
Vladimir Putin: Six million people [coverage of the Olympic movement]?
Yu.Chikhanchin: Yes.
Vladimir Putin: Unbelievable. This is a large number of people.
Yu.Chikhanchin: Yes. These are the lessons of financial security. But also 19 countries. And today we have applications from 25 countries for the next Olympiad.
But the initiative that the Brazilian student Augusto proposed, Augusto’s initiative, is the creation of an international movement, we are working on it now. I’ll show you later.
We have launched an information and communication training platform for schoolchildren and students, which Promsvyazbank created for us on your behalf, thank you very much for this.
We are doing similar work not only with students, schoolchildren, but also launched the same project “New Generation” together with Rossotrudnichestvo, but for employees of financial intelligence services. Seven countries have been united, and other countries are already asking for the same thing. That’s how the work is organized.
Vladimir Putin: Thank you.
