One Year of Russian Law on Fighting Money Laundering

One year has passed since the federal law "On Countering the Legalization /Laundering/ of Revenues Obtained Through Criminal Activity", adopted on Russian President Vladimir Putin's initiative, came into force in Russia.

In accordance with the law, a state body was established to counter the legalization of criminal revenues - the Financial Monitoring Committee /FMC/. Its data suggests that from February to November last year about 215,000 cases were submitted to the committee for consideration, of which 21,000 were passed to other organizations to be further worked on, and 42 to courts.

In June 2002 the FMC joined the Egmont Group that unites the world's financial intelligence services.

The law particularly resulted in the FATF decision of October 11 last year, according to which Russia was crossed out of the FATF black list, and received the status of an observer in that organization.

In FATF experts' estimate, Russia has achieved great progress in the fight against money laundering.