MOSCOW, May 30 (RIA Novosti) - The Russian Financial Monitoring Service, Rosfinmonitoring, said today it was pursuing legislation that would broaden its jurisdiction in the fight against financial corruption.

"One of the norms that may become law is the authority to suspend financial operations on the suspicion that they may be involved in money laundering," Viktor Zubkov, chairman of Rosfinmonitoring, said at an anti-money laundering conference in Moscow. "Another norm is the monitoring of financial accounts of certain persons."

Rosfinmonitoring, the Russian counterpart to the international Financial Action Task Force on Money Laundering (FATF), is currently involved in 18 joint international investigations, Zubkov said.

He also said the upcoming ratification of the UN anti-corruption convention requires that clients and beneficiaries in operations be identified. The convention will also include measures to intensify the fight against corruption in the private sector.

"It is obvious that the ratification of the convention will call for amendments to [our] legislation, firstly to the Criminal Code," Zubkov said.

In the past five months, Rosfinmonitoring sent authorities 680 reports on suspicious operations, with a total value of 110 billion rubles ($4 billion).

Zubkov said this was twice as much in volume as the same period last year and three times the sum. Rosfinmonitoring now receives 12,000 to 14,000 reports a day compared to the 5,000 - 6,000 a day it received in 2004.

Zubkov said that in 2004 Rosfinmonitoring conducted 3,260 financial investigations, several of which resulted in convictions. "There were not that many, only six, but they were serious violations of the law involving large sums of money," he said.

"So far this year several cases have been brought to trial based upon our materials," Zubkov said. In one of the cases the accused was sentenced to 12 years in prison, which sends a serious signal to people involved in money laundering.