A bill has been introduced in the Russian State Duma to prohibit standing for election to the lower house not only for members of an extremist organisation, but also for those who contributed financial support to it. The statute of limitations for financial assistance is set at one year before the organisation is recognised as extremist.
Public figure Leonid Volkov, in his Twitter wrote, that the document is aimed specifically at Navalny’s opposition team. We explain why this will not affect those who donate cryptocurrency.
The political dimension of the news has no bearing on the turnover of cryptocurrency in Russia, GMT Legal managing partner Andrey Tugarin told ForkLog in a comment.
The turnover of cryptocurrency in Russia is regulated by the law “On Digital Financial Assets”. It forbids using cryptocurrency to pay for goods and services and advertising such a possibility.
“In all other respects, the turnover is not restricted. The question of gift or donation of cryptocurrency is not regulated by law and is not touched upon; there is no prohibition,” explained the lawyer.
To affect a donor, there must be explicit, indisputable and non-contradictory evidence of ownership of the wallet from which the donation to a particular person originated, notes Andrey Tugarin.
“If a person has not passed the identification process, technically determining wallet ownership will be extremely difficult; in some cases, impossible.”
The problem of identifying the wallet owner also persists for the draft law on the taxation of cryptocurrency transactions, the lawyer continued. If the Russian authorities have a working mechanism allowing them to accurately identify wallet owners, it remains unclear why it is not applied or announced.
“One cannot say that cryptocurrency donors will be subject to any restrictions, including due to the absence of an adopted and approved technical solution for identifying the owner,” concluded Tugarin, adding that the practical impact of the bill on Russian society can only be assessed after the final version comes into force.
Earlier in April, Moscow prosecutors filed a suit to declare FBK (the organisation listed in the Russian registry of “foreign agents”) and Navalny’s HQs extremist organisations. Rosfinmonitoring had included them in the list of organisations with information about their involvement in extremist activity or terrorism. At a closed hearing on April 27, the Moscow City Court, as a precautionary measure on the suit, imposed a ban on certain actions, including the use of bank accounts.
Leonid Volkov told ForkLog that this ban does not extend to cryptocurrency wallets of the organisations.
On April 29, Volkov announced the dissolution of the headquarters, noting that some would continue to operate “as independent, autonomous civil-society and political movements.”
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