Urals Officials Obliged to Report Cryptocurrency Holdings

Officials from the Sverdlovsk regional Accounts Chamber, the regional election commission, as well as local civil servants and their spouses, will report their holdings in cryptocurrencies and tokens. decree signed by the region’s governor Yevgeny Kuyvashev.

The initiative emerged with the adoption of the law “On Digital Financial Assets (DFA)”, as such a mechanism had not previously been codified in regulatory acts.

Russian law enforcement authorities are already examining several cases related to bribes paid in cryptocurrency.

In April 2019, a former FSB investigator, Alexey Kolbov, was detained on suspicion of extorting $1 million in bitcoins. Together with an accomplice, he demanded money from Alexander Galumov, the son of former Izvestia publishing house director Erast Galumov, who was accused of fraud involving investment contracts.

The law signed at the end of July, “On DFA”, defines “digital financial assets” and “digital currencies”. The currencies recognised as property are prohibited from being used to pay for goods and services across the Russian Federation. The document will come into force on 1 January 2021.

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