The Russian Ministry of Finance has submitted to the bill regulating cryptocurrency mining a provision on criminal liability for failing to declare digital assets. This was reported by Baza, citing a package of documents prepared by the head of the ministry, Alexei Moiseev, in February.
The new draft obliges miners to ‘provide information about receiving digital currency’ to the tax authorities. It must include details of their cryptocurrency wallet. The procedures and deadlines for reporting these details have not yet been determined.
Amendments to the Criminal Code proposed by the ministry envisage that if, within three years, a miner evades declaring income exceeding 15 million rubles at least twice, they face up to two years’ imprisonment, as well as a fine of up to 300,000 rubles and up to two years of compulsory labour.
If the amount of concealed income exceeds 45 million rubles, this could lead to up to four years’ imprisonment, a fine of up to 2 million rubles and up to four years of compulsory labour.
The mining bill envisages two ways of selling cryptocurrencies: on foreign crypto exchanges or on a Russian platform within an experimental legal regime. Punishment for ‘illegal organisation of the circulation of digital currencies’ provides for up to seven years’ imprisonment, a fine of up to 1 million rubles and up to five years of compulsory labour.
The new edition of the document includes an amendment to the anti-money-laundering law. Crypto holders ‘are obliged to provide the authorised body, upon its request, with information about the operations they undertake’.
It is also stated that ‘transactions in digital currency <…> are carried out by the person who mined it <…> in their own name, at their own expense and in their own interests’.
Since February, the described package of bills has been under review by the Ministry of Economic Development, the Ministry of Justice, the Federal Tax Service, the Central Bank, and other agencies.
As reported in the State Duma of the Russian Federation since mid-November 2022, the mining-regulating bill obliges individuals and legal entities to report to the tax authorities on mined cryptocurrencies, indicating the address to which they are credited.
At the same time, the document imposes a ban on advertising digital currencies or offering them in any form to an unlimited circle of people.
Due to the need for additional approvals, consideration of the bill was postponed to 2023.