Kremlin advises officials to start closing foreign accounts, including those in CIS

Map of Western CIS/FSU and European Environs

(Interfax – MOSCOW, April 11, 2013) Russian state officials, reporting their income and expenses exceeding joint income of their families for three years, will have to declare foreign bank accounts and securities kept not only in foreign banks but in banks of the Customs Union and the CIS as well, aide of the Russian State Presidential Legal Directorate, Valentin Mikhailov, said.

“In terms of the ban on accounts, this is abroad. We are building the Union State with Belarus and legal standards on certain aspects related to citizens’ moving, their employment and pensions have already been unified. However, there is no unification on the issue of foreign assets. So the demand in the decrees to declare them applies to Belarus, Ukraine and Kazakhstan same as to Germany, France and so on,” Mikhailov said in an interview with Rossiyskaya Gazeta newspaper, which will be published on April 12.

Mikhailov said that the law banning major foreign assets would definitely be passed. High-level state officials to whom the law will apply should not wait until it comes into force and start getting rid of the assets the sooner the better, Mikhailov said.

“It is compulsory to report property and accounts abroad in the income reports the officials have been obliged to submit for several years. The law banning foreign accounts will be passed sooner or later so state officials better start closing these accounts now. If the law comes into force, they will have just three months. This is very short period. Who needs extra hustle?” the official said.

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