Rosfinmonitoring proposed allowing security forces to block the accounts of terrorism suspects and organizers of unauthorized rallies

Rosfinmonitoring has developed a bill on temporary extrajudicial blocking of accounts whose owners are suspected of financing terrorism. The corresponding document was published on the portal of draft regulatory legal acts.

In addition, departments can suspend transactions on accounts if they suspect that funds from them are being used to finance extremist activities, holding public events in violation of established procedures, or for drug trafficking.

It is proposed to give this right to the heads of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the FSB and Rosfinmonitoring itself, as well as the heads of territorial bodies. The blocking can last up to 10 days.

“At the same time, such a decision can be made only in urgent cases, and the information that is the basis for making this decision and available to the authorized state bodies must be “sufficient, previously confirmed and documented,” the explanatory note says.

The bill also obliges departments to notify the Prosecutor General's Office within 24 hours about blocking an account.

Rosfinmonitoring considers blocking accounts through the courts to be ineffective, since to finance illegal activities they use accounts opened in front of dummies, opened for a short period of time, or using procedures that do not require identification of owners.

Corrected at 00.14. The initial version of the news reported that Rosfinmonitoring proposed to reset the accounts of the suspects. In fact, the department only proposed to block transactions on these accounts.