Russia is one of the countries that have a clear knowledge of money-laundering and financial crimes in its financial system and has taken actions to address it, however, there is still a need for the country to improve its strategy and plans on investigating money laundering, especially those involving other countries.
After a thorough assessment of Russia’s anti-money laundering and counter terrorist financing conducted by The Financial Action Task Force (FATF), which include the productivity of Russia’s approach to combat financial risks evolving from United Nations and home-based terrorist organizations, reports have shown that Russia has through deep knowledge and various laws and regulations identified several terrorist financing and money laundering risks affecting its financial systems. The country has put in place strategies to combat these risks, but a lot still needs to be done to improve the standard of the existing strategies; like focusing on prompt freezing of assets associated with terrorism, and proliferation of weapons without a restriction on the profile of those involved.
Additionally, Russia already cooperates and has a rigid agreement with about 100 international financial intelligence units. It also uses financial intelligence excellently to enhance money-laundering and terrorist financing investigations. However, more effort needs to be put on sophisticated financial crime cases especially those involving international transactions.
