Russia’s prosecutor general Igor Krasnov declared that all civil servants would be required to declare their cryptocurrencies on an equal basis with other assets starting next year. Krasnov said this while speaking at a corruption meeting involving 15 other prosecutor generals from the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) member states and elsewhere. The SCO is an eight-member political, economic, and security alliance founded in 2001 by the likes of China, Russia, Kazakhstan, and Tajikistan. It also includes several affiliate states such as Iran, Belarus, Cambodia, and Afghanistan.
“Officials will have to indicate the cryptocurrency in their income declarations.”
According to the Russia Today report, officials will have to indicate the cryptocurrency in their income declarations, allowing the state to keep track of all civil servants’ earnings. Until now, public officials in Russia were not required to declare their crypto assets. A 2018 advisory from the Russian labor ministry had appeared to exonerate them from doing so. But amid concerns of crypto being used in oil corruption, the prosecutor general’s office revealed it had seized over $440 million undisclosed cash assets from public officials over the past three years.
The Bank of Russia suggests unqualified investors should not be allowed to invest more than a certain amount in crypto.
Russia’s central bank suggested that unqualified investors in Russia should not be allowed to invest more than 600,000 Russian rubles ($7,800) in digital assets per year. The bank proposed to set limits on annual cryptocurrency investments by non-professional investors in the country. The authority laid out the new proposal in an explanatory note referring to Russia’s newly passed crypto law, “On Digital Financial Assets,” or DFA. The central bank’s official statement stipulates that the new regulatory restriction will involve not only digital financial assets but also “other digital rights.”
