Lawyers Take Aim at Russia’s Crypto Legislation

Russian legal experts have criticized the nation’s crypto laws, suggesting that courts in the country have struggled when dealing with crypto in the past – and hinting that recent legislation may have done little to lift the legal fog surrounding how tokens are policed.

Per a report from media outlet RBC, recently promulgated Russian laws pertaining to the legal and tax status of cryptoassets have been designed to save courts from a legal quagmire that has seen cases where judges have estimated the price of individuals’ cryptoassets by calculating the worth of the flash drive devices they were stored on.

But two lawyers speaking to the media outlet claim that the new rules have not helped the judiciary very much – if at all.
Angelika Matushkina, a legal expert at the Moscow Digital School, warned that traders who receive fiat from selling their funds are still finding the process “problematic” when dealing with banks.

Banks appear confused as to how they should deal with crypto, and many are seeking to avoid trouble from the authorities – by taking draconian-sounding measures.

Matushkina claimed that transactions involving crypto can be “blocked” and accounts “frozen.”

She advised traders to arrange pre-emptive meetings with their bank managers to discuss the requirements and documents needed in order to register income from crypto sales, to comply with new tax regulations on declaring crypto funds. Otherwise, she warned, traders may “run into problems from the [regulatory] Federal Financial Monitoring Service (Rosfinmonitoring) or bank compliance teams.

The same media outlet quotes Maria Agranovskaya, a managing partner and fintech lawyer at Russian legal advisor GRAD, as stating that the new laws have been “something of a disappointment,” as it was originally intended to “provide a basis for the legitimate activities of all market participants, to put in order the disparate practice for courts and to allow banks to work with crypto projects” – something Moscow has so far failed to do in many lawyers’ eyes.
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