"We appreciate that Russia's banks are becoming increasingly law-abiding… The number of dubious operations almost halved in 2014. On the one hand, it makes us happy. But if a number of banks is trying to hide these suspicious transactions from the Federal Financial Monitoring Service and the Central Bank, then they should not forget that they fall into the view of our international colleagues," Chikhanchin said at the congress of the Association of Russian Banks.
The Central Bank deputy chairman, in turn, lauded the Russian service's close work with the intergovernmental Financial Action Task Force on Money Laundering (FATF) to stem capital flight, which last year alone was estimated at over $150 billion.
Dmitry Skobelkin said the Paris-based FATF is in "very constructive cooperation" with the Central Bank and Rosfinmonitoring to draft by June 1 a capital amnesty bill exempting those suspected of making questionable international financial transactions from criminal, administrative and fiscal responsibility.
The Russian monitor has conducted almost 40,000 money laundering investigations in 2015, restoring nearly $5.5 billion to the state.
Last year, Rosfinmonitoring suspended $2.5 billion worth of questionable operations.
Chikhanchin estimated late last month that nearly half the transactions were questionable, with a majority being carried out in the stock market.
