The Russian Finance Ministry plans to tighten control over foreign trade operations by classifying some of them as money laundering, in a move analysts say is a tool to tackle the capital outflow problem, Vedomosti business daily said on Monday.
The central bank has recently more than doubled its 2010 net capital outflow forecast to $22 billion, while Russian companies' foreign assets soared $24.8 billion in the first half of the year.
Vedomosti quoted Otkritie financial corporation analyst Vladimir Tikhomirov as saying the government suspected that the foreign trade operations accounted for the bulk of capital outflow.
The paper quoted Kirill Parfyonov, president of the Banking Accountants Club, as saying the two most popular foreign trade operations used to take capital out of the country are non-receipt of export revenue or goods under import contracts.
The Finance Ministry is proposing designating non-receipt of export revenue as a money laundering operation, which would be subject to criminal investigation. It also proposes adding non-receipt of export revenues or goods under an import deal to the list of operations liable for control by the Federal Financial Monitoring Service.
The current criminal code stipulates that non-receipt of export revenue of more than 30 million rubles ($1 million) is punishable by three years in prison. But prosecution is rare, as foreign regulators do not consider non-receipt of export revenue a crime and would not help Russian authorities, Vedomosti quoted Igor Shikov from Yegorov, Puginsky, Afanasiyev and Partners attorneys as saying.
The government is trying to keep capital inside the country by tightening controls, and not with the help of economic measures, Parfyonov said.
MOSCOW, November 22 (RIA Novosti)
