Under martial law, the observance of financial discipline becomes the most important task for all business entities. It is crucial to ensure a stable economy. It is clear to representatives of all industries who, from the very beginning of a full-scale invasion, have been helping the State as much as possible. They pay taxes in advance, support national and regional social and humanitarian projects, and transfer funds for the needs of the AFU and territorial defence units.
At the same time, in these difficult times, some officials produce draft normative and regulatory acts significantly complicating the work of legal business. One such document is the draft Regulation of the Ministry of Finance “On the Risk Criteria of Legalization (Laundering) of Proceeds from Crime, the Financing of Terrorism and the Proliferation of Weapons of Mass Destruction.”
Despite the name, these criteria included all possible financial relationships between sellers and buyers of goods and services, which are legal entities and individuals. The provisions of the regulation require entrepreneurs to create almost full-fledged investigative bodies to apply the risk evaluation procedure to any client.
These requirements are the same for, for instance, banking and financial institutions and licensed gambling operators. It means that all the verifications applied by banks to potential corporate borrowers must be applied by online casinos to all their customers! Imagine a gambler visiting a legal gambling establishment to escape from work and stress, and he or she is offered to give a bunch of personal information and wait for a while until all the data is checked, and only then can the player gamble. It is only a way to scare customers away from legal establishments and make them become interested in illegal ones.
The following changes should be made to the draft regulation not to interfere with legal gambling and, at the same time, prevent the risks of legalization of proceeds from crime and financing of terrorism:
1. remove provisions not typical of the activities of gambling operators;
2. set out the criteria only for gambling operators in a separate section;
3. apply a risk-based approach only when the relevant threshold amount of the financial transaction is reached.
Businesses should earn and pay taxes and not constantly adapt to the new officials’ demands. It is bad enough that the war tests everyone’s endurance. We should not create additional problems and complicate everything even more. Financial monitoring should cover dubious and potentially risky transactions and not all types, forms, and volumes of financial relations between producers/sellers of goods and services and buyers.
In addition, financial monitoring measures should take into account the specifics of all economy sectors since universal approaches will harm everyone without exception. That is why international partners and business representatives will not show confidence in this project if relevant state bodies and business associations are not involved in the discussion.
Comments