The Russian Federation submitted its follow-up report to the FATF

The report covers Russia’s progress in enhancing national anti-money laundering system over the past two years since FATF/MONEYVAL/EAG mutual evaluation in 2008.

The mutual evaluation proved high efficiency of Russian AML/CFT regime. According to unofficial ratings Russia was listed among the top ten countries along with Sweden, Italy and Canada. Rosfinmonitoring was included into top five world FIUs. Having acknowledged all the achievements, the experts however suggested a number of recommendations on improving Russia’s AML/CFT system.

The follow-up report submitted to the FATF Plenary is a mandatory part of the FATF/FSRBs evaluation procedure. It reveals the results of joint work of Russian state authorities and private sector organizations. 
Considerable achievements have been made in the following areas:

1.    enhancement of AML/CFT legislation; 
2.    enhancement of law enforcement authorities’ and Rosfinmonitoring’s activities aimed at prevention, detection and investigation of ML/FT related crimes; 
3.    further development of AML/CFT supervisory activities; 
4.    enhancement of training system for AML/CFT experts.

The most significant achievements in enhancing AML/CFT legal infrastructure are as follows:

• specification of requirements to paying agents regarding identification of clients conducting non-recurrent payments; 
• introduction of detailed regulations for money transfers regarding provision of information on the payer; 
• specification of AML/CFT mechanisms for financial institutions regarding foreign and international officials. 

By taking these measures Russia expects to achieve high level of its national AML/CFT regime compliance with 40+9 FATF Recommendations.

The submitted follow-up report has finalized the first round of Russia’s progress reports to the evaluators. Previously Russia successfully defended similar reports at the MONEYVAL (September 2009) and EAG (December 2009) Plenaries.

The next follow-up report will be submitted to the FATF Plenary in June 2011.

According to the Head of Legal Department of Rosfinmonitoring and Co-Chair of the EAG Working Group on Mutual Evaluations and Legal Issues Mr. Pavel Livadny the success of this follow-up report is due to increase Russia’s investment appeal and the level of confidence in the nation’s financial system held by the international community. “Compliance with FATF standards has a crucial impact on international economic ratings. At the same time acknowledgement of Russia’s progress by the FATF experts rules out any possibility of the country’s inclusion in the sanction lists” underlined Mr. Livadniy.