You're reading: Russia joins Council of Europe’s convention countering money laundering, terrorism financing

MOSCOW – Russian President Vladimir Putin has signed a decree ratifying the Council of Europe’s Convention on Laundering, Search, Seizure and Confiscation of the Proceeds from Crime and on the Financing of Terrorism.

The text of the document was published on the official legal information web portal on Wednesday.

The objective of the convention is creating conditions for closer and more efficient cooperation between the members of the Council of Europe in implementing the general criminal policy, including by means of depriving criminals of profits from illegal activities.

The convention envisages a package of legal and other measures used during identification, confiscation, freezing or seizure of property or profits from criminal activities, in investigation and prevention of crimes, as well as the creation by participating states of financial intelligence units, and it also determines the procedure and principles of international cooperation in the application of this document.

Certain provisions of the convention provide for various options of a state’s actions in implementing the obligations it had assumed. In this regard, the law on the convention’s ratification includes a number of applications taking into consideration requirements of the Russian legislation and pertaining to forfeiture measures, powers and approaches during investigation, requests for information on banking accounts and requests for their monitoring, the service of documents, the request form and its language, restrictions on the use of information and proof, cooperation between financial intelligence units.

Ratification of the convention will require amendments to the Russian Administrative Offences Code in terms of the introduction of legal entities’ administrative liability for laundering of money obtained by criminal means.