A new bill may enable the Federal Taxation Service of the Russian Federation to access information related to bank accounts of Russian citizens.
The draft law targeted at combating money laundering was submitted to the State Duma of the Russian Federation at the end of 2012. It provides for accretion of the Federal Taxation Service duties. In particular, taxmen will get access to the numbers of all the bank accounts and other details deemed to be bank secrecy. Moreover, they will also be able to cancel any commercial operations they consider to be economically meaningless.
The confidential data will be available to head of the Federal Taxation Service and duly authorized officials on request only in the course of a regular audit.
Presently, the anti-money laundering bill that will prompt amendments to the Tax Code of the Russian Federation is considered by the State Duma. It is seen to be approved during the spring session.
The draft law also suggests reducing the enormous amounts of laundered money from 30 million to 600 thousand rubles.
