Law drafted to block suspicious money transfers for two days
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Experts assessed the pros and cons of a new way to deal with financial swindlers
In Russia, they want to pass a law under which banks will be able to block suspicious money transfers for two days. According to Anatoly Aksakov, Chairman of the State Duma Committee on the Financial Market, thanks to this rule, credit institutions and their clients will have more time to cancel dubious payments. Data on the details of fraudsters will be in a special database, where it is planned to collect all information about transfer attempts without the consent of the client. What difficulties the Russians may face if the law is adopted, experts told MK.
A 72-year-old pensioner from Yaroslavl voluntarily transferred more than 1 million rubles to scammers. She received a phone call from an “MIA officer” who said that her nephew was trying to get a loan in her name. But the Russian woman did not have any nephew, which she reported to the “police officer from the special department.” Then the caller began to convince the pensioner to transfer all her savings to a “safe” account. Believing the fraudster, the woman sent him all the savings accumulated over many years.
The story is fresh, but similar stories are a dime a dozen. Criminals use the method of social engineering – the most common way to steal funds from citizens in our country. According to the Bank of Russia, last year the total volume of transactions with signs of fraud amounted to 13.58 billion rubles, and in almost half of the cases people became victims of manipulation and themselves transferred money to attackers or provided passwords. Refunds are rare. According to the Central Bank of the Russian Federation, in the same 2021, only 6.8% of the money stolen in this way was returned.
The law proposed by the State Duma deputies will allow banks to freeze transfers and operations on an account for two days if there is a suspicion that it belongs to fraudsters. The credit institution will be obliged to do this if the recipient’s account is found in a special database. If the bank violates the order and transfers funds to an account from the “black list” created jointly by the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the Central Bank, it will be obliged to return this money to the client.
However, this initiative has caused heated debate among experts about its effectiveness. “One of the obvious advantages of our banking sector is the system of fast payments,” says Pavel Medvedev, financial ombudsman of the Association of Russian Banks. “They have great value: something happens and I can instantly transfer money to a needy relative, friend or someone else. It is also applied more widely: I pay for something to the seller and he immediately receives the money and can ship the goods to me from the online store. And here they plan to stop transfers for two days. Thus, one of the most important achievements of the settlement system of Russian banks will stop working.” As Medvedev jokes, another law should be adopted – “On getting the police out of their chairs” so that they can contact banks and find out to which account a person’s money was transferred. And after 10 minutes, the suspect, to whose account the funds were transferred, would already be taken to the police, and his account would be blocked. “The only thing that could be added to what is already there is the ability to exchange information between the Ministry of Internal Affairs and banks via special communications, a specially dedicated channel, but there is no need to invent anything else, because all the necessary laws are already in place,” the Ombudsman believes.
According to the lawyer of the “Unified Center for Protection” Kirill Reznik, collecting the base of recipients of funds to whom the deceived people sent money is not particularly difficult for banks. But the main questions here are different: have the scammers really been seen reusing the same details? Has it been reliably established that not every new act of fraud is preceded by the opening of an account, but instead is carried out with the help of a pre-existing one? Because otherwise – if the criminals constantly update the details – this measure will be useless.
“If we are talking only about transfers using details that have already entered the database of fraudsters, then the idea is not bad,” Diana Sork, a member of the supreme coordinating council of the International Confederation of Consumer Societies (ConfOP), continues the conversation. – Another question is how it will be implemented. What will be the procedure for inclusion in the database, exclusion from it, how errors will be eliminated. If the inclusion in the database is based on some decision (which is already physically present), and not on some suspicion of the employee, then this bill can protect against fraudsters that are already known, the human rights activist is sure.
As Petr Gusyatnikov, Senior Managing Partner at PG Partners, recalls, today any banking transaction can be delayed. The bank always stipulates the period during which the money will reach the recipient’s account, sometimes it can be up to 30 days, so fears that new requirements will delay transfers are groundless.
Newspaper headline:
Two days to block
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