They play word games on crypto exchanges – Kommersant FM
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Russians have learned to use sanctioned banks to buy cryptocurrencies. Formally, the largest exchanges prohibit transactions if they involve companies from blacklists. However, in the case of digital assets, transactions are concluded directly between the buyer and seller, the exchange only verifies the advertisements from the participants. After financial organizations fell under sanctions, they were prohibited from being mentioned in the details. However, as Forbes writes, Russians were able to bypass the restrictions: instead of Sber, for example, they write “green bank”, instead of Alfa Bank – “red” or “A-Bank”, instead of “Tinkoff” – “yellow”. As a result, about half of all transactions on the market over the past six months were carried out using organizations from the SDN list of the US Treasury.
Are there any risks for the sites here? And could customers be harmed? The former head of Binance in Russia and the CIS, Vladimir Smerkis, believes that threats exist: “Of course, exchanges were forced to remove a number of payment methods, such as Sberbank, Tinkoff and other banks that were subject to sanctions.
However, internal regulations may be different. The largest sites monitored what was written in the ad itself. Of course, we understand that users themselves very often violate these regulations. The majority of clients use sanctioned banks, but there are more and more platforms for conducting transactions, and users will still have opportunities.
P2P transfers cannot be technically prohibited. But this pressure is increasing.
At the same time, good platforms have extensive experience and capabilities to verify the completion of certain payments. You can record a video or take a bank statement. The support services that handle P2P transfers are staffed by professionals who deal with tens of thousands of such transactions and can determine whether one of them was carried out or not.”
Formally, as a result of such transactions, the exchange and the bank do not interact, so it is difficult to consider this a violation of sanctions restrictions. However, the US Treasury warned that Russians could start using cryptocurrencies to circumvent restrictions in the financial sector and this must be combated.
As a result, for example, the Coinbase and Kraken exchanges blocked the accounts of Russians, the OKX platform refused to trade in rubles, and Bybit banned transactions involving sanctioned banks. If the transactions do take place, this will cause complaints from American regulators, believes Kira Vinokurova, co-head of the sanctions law practice at Pen & Paper:
“The main risks here, of course, arise from the sites. We have already seen several cases of crypto exchanges being included in sanctions lists, especially from the United States.
The opinion of the American regulator is that the exchange, as an intermediary, is obliged to check the parties. The task of US financial institutions is to cut off Russians from the international infrastructure. And those companies that do not properly conduct these checks and do not contribute to meeting this goal immediately fall into the risk zone.
The level of technology is now high enough to determine, even with indirect red flags, the location of the payment and all the IP addresses that signal that the transaction is carried out from Russia, from a sanctioned bank. After all, there are only a few organizations left that were not affected by the restrictions.”
There are also sanctions risks for exchanges from the European Union. In October 2022, as part of the eighth package of sanctions, he banned the provision of cryptocurrency services to Russian citizens. True, this only applies to sites that are registered in the EU.
Everything is clear with us – Telegram channel “Kommersant FM”.
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