The Office of the Prosecutor General of Russia has announced that all officials and civil servants in Russia would soon be expected to declare all their digital assets holdings.
This new development is coming after the new crypto law that was passed in the European country. The new law is expected to take effect at the start of the new year. The requirements were brought to public notice by the office of the Prosecutor General in Russia.
It was announced on October 20, a day after a meeting took place involving Igor Krasnov, the Prosecutor General and 15 other Prosecutor Generals. The other Prosecutor Generals were representatives of the member states of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation or SCO.
Russian Prosecutor General to kickstart crypto assets declaration
In the meeting, Krasnov explained the reasons why officeholders and public civil servants must declare their crypto holdings. Furthermore, the prosecutor general noted that everyone would be expected to report their holdings equally.
Furthermore, he said that the declaration of crypto assets holding was going to start with him next year. This is coming off the back of the previous announcement that was made by the Labour Ministry that countered this new development in 2018.
Officials in public office were not previously mandated to declare the crypto assets they hold in their tax reports. Analysts have however said that the previous announcement was made because crypto was not regulated at the time.
That was one of the reasons that birthed the regulation of crypto in Russia as the government were increasingly worried that digital assets could be used for illegal activities. That, however, is not a lie as crypto has been known to be used for illicit activities such as terrorism funding, corruption and bribery. In three years, reports have claimed that about $440 million has been seized from public officeholders.
Eurasian countries expected to adopt Russia’s new crypto policy
This new mandate was announced after President of Russia, Vladimir Putin signed off the new crypto policies into law in July. The new law classifies digital assets in the same category as physical commodities.
This new policy is scheduled to come into play by January 2021 baring any last-minute development. The new policy is regarded as the first move by Russia to regulate crypto assets after years of the assets being unregulated. Even though the new law refuses to recognize crypto as legal tender, dealing in crypto assets would now be legitimate across the European country.
The SCO members states, India, China, Pakistan and others were joined by non-members, Cambodia, Mongolia to attend the gathering which was held to find a way forward in combating corruption. Analysts have noted that it is only a matter of time before countries in the Eurasian region adopt the same crypto laws as Russia.
In August, Russia’s Financial Monitoring Service announced that it had discovered a way to partially de-anonymize crypto transactions on a few digital assets. The body claims it was successful when they did it with Bitcoin and Ethereum transactions and also managed to do it with Monero, a known privacy coin.
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