“The responsibility for currency manipulation” — comment of Konstantin Ziyatdinov for the Agency of legal information
Responsibility for violation of currency legislation is planned to be reduced. The Ministry of finance of the Russian Federation took the initiative of liberalization.
Experts link the proposal of the Ministry of finance to reduce administrative fines for citizens with the strengthening of the control of the accounts opened by Russians in foreign banks. Already on July 1 this year, 73 countries of the world will pass such data to the Federal tax service (API wrote in detail about the international information exchange project – on the Swiss account).
In addition, after the abolition of the Federal service for financial and budgetary supervision in 2017, the authority for currency control passed to the fiscal department. According to Konstantin Ziyatdinov, head of the Department of international projects of Prime Advice Consulting Group, this has led to tighter administration:
Falling under the "draconian fine" has become much easier – any violation of the currency legislation in the part of transactions on the accounts of individuals in foreign banks can lead to unjustifiably strict consequences, when the amount of the penalty can significantly exceed the amount on the account.
According to the lawyer, currently currency legislation "is a hell of a mixture of restrictions and prohibitions and practically provokes any person to violate it":
Extremely high fines do not justify their appointment – to encourage the proper implementation of the legislation. The risk of losing all funds in the accounts is so serious with unjustifiably high public sanction that it makes it economically advantageous to simply abandon any project. In today's conditions of tax transparency, a reasonable balance must be struck between freedom of economic activity and public restrictions. In addition, any public regulation should be adapted to the peculiarities of national legal awareness and to the specifics of the enforcement process. A high fine is always a guarantee of a protracted contestation process.