| Viktor Zubkov wants to take four deputies with him to financial intelligence Yesterday, the head of the Federal Service for Financial Monitoring (FSFM), Viktor Zubkov, entered into a hardware dispute with the head of the government apparatus, Dmitry Kozak. The country's chief financial intelligence officer decided that two deputies, as required by the new trends in administrative reform, were not enough for him. To combat money laundering and terrorist financing, Mr. Zubkov needs four deputies at once.
Moreover, unlike Deputy Minister of Economic Development and Trade Arkady Dvorkovich, who recently criticized Mr. Kozak’s idea loudly and in very harsh terms, the chief financial intelligence officer, as required by the position, acted quietly - “without noise and without dust": I simply sent relevant proposals to the government.
Moreover, Viktor Zubkov does not consider it necessary to reduce the total number of his subordinates (405 people). “The management must meet us halfway and preserve what we had - both the number of deputies and the number of employees,” said Mr. Zubkov.
Mr. Zubkov explains his intention to avoid layoffs by the large volume of work. The information that financial intelligence officers must sift through is indeed increasing.
Two years ago, they controlled only the operations of credit institutions amounting to over 600 thousand rubles. (approximately 21.5 thousand dollars). About a year later, changes were made to anti-money laundering legislation that expanded the list of organizations required to provide information to the Financial Monitoring Committee. These are insurance companies, professional participants in the securities market, companies managing investment and non-state pension funds, postal organizations, pawnshops, leasing companies, dealers in precious metals and jewelry, organizers of sweepstakes, bookmakers and lotteries. And very soon - perhaps as early as July 1, 2004 - real estate-related organizations will be added to this list: real estate and notary offices.
The government intends to introduce the corresponding amendments to the legislation to the State Duma in April. Moreover, notaries, as the FSFM explained to the Vremya Novostei newspaper correspondent, will have to inform the service only about some real estate transactions. The FSFM understands perfectly well that it is necessary to control all purchase and sale transactions of apartments, offices, warehouses, etc. unrealistic. Therefore, the “intelligence officers” initially cut off all operations worth less than 2.5 million rubles. (about 90 thousand dollars). Viktor Zubkov does not believe that such a measure will lead to the revival of total control over large purchases, which was previously carried out by the Ministry of Taxes (control has been abolished this year as contrary to the Tax Code, which proclaims the presumption of innocence of the taxpayer).
According to the head of the FSFM, we are talking only about a separate category of suspicious transactions, and exclusively from the point of view of possible money laundering or terrorist financing. Moreover, all this, according to Mr. Zubkov, is done strictly in accordance with the recommendations of the International Organization for Combating Money Laundering - FATF.
Insisting on maintaining the integrity of the FSFM staffing table, Viktor Zubkov is confident that his colleagues from other departments will follow his example. At least from those that are already few in number. Moreover, Prime Minister Mikhail Fradkov does not seem to mind. He recently told reporters that he is calm about “filling up services and agencies” and would not like “this scheme (two deputies each - Ed. ) was perceived as a stereotype." Mikhail VOROBYEV |
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