Interior Minister Vladimir Kolokoltsev has suggested Bank of Russia to conclude an agreement on information exchange and provide to the staff greater powers to obtain information and documents that relate to Bank secrecy. On Wednesday the newspaper "Izvestia" citing a letter Kolokoltsev, the Chairman of the Central Bank Elvira Nabiullina.
According to the publication, in a letter to the head of the interior Ministry proposes to change the approach to obtaining the staff of its Department of information constituting banking secrecy to effectively counteract crimes in credit institutions. According to Kolokoltseva, now considering an updated version of the draft agreement between the Central Bank and the Ministry of interior on information exchange, while the position of the Ministry in the document is currently not taken into account, the newspaper said.
As an example of a failure to inform the Minister cited the situation with the withdrawal of money from FC "Opening" and PSB, the criminal case against the former owners which were issued in 2018-2019, while the Central Bank revealed violations in these banks in the period of 2016-2017 years. "This situation is partly connected with impossibility of timely receipt of law enforcement information and documents containing Bank secrecy", – quotes the edition of the letter Kolokoltseva. Also, the interior Ministry said that a credit institution is denied the security forces in the provision of materials, referring to the ambiguity of some articles of laws. As reported in a letter, the Ministry has prepared amendments to the legislation to remedy this situation.
In a press-service of the Bank of Russia, the newspaper reported that in 2018, the Central Bank supported the amendment, which allows in some cases to pass on to the investigative agencies of Bank secrecy. In the regulator stressed that not consider it necessary to empower the law enforcement agencies in obtaining this mystery.
At the end of February Kolokoltsev has blamed Central Bank delayed reporting of the interior Ministry on violations in the banking sector, which hampered their operational detection and prevention. Then the regulator stressed that they shared the concern of the Ministry of interior to the scale of embezzlement of funds and support the proposal to strengthen cooperation with law enforcement. While the Central Bank added that the main problems of delayed response to crimes in financial sphere are not in the field of interagency cooperation.
