Money laundering is the act of transforming money or other money obtained as a result of any illegal activity, in money or investments that appear legal, so that their illegal source cannot be traced.

Procedures & Methods

The purpose of a number of measures and procedures to counter money laundering, which use Internet banking to solve certain problems, is a guarantee that customers who use online banking services do so in accordance with legal standards. This minimises both personal risk as well as the risks of law-abiding customers to be involved in the illegal actions of third parties.

To minimise the risks associated with money laundering and financing of terrorist activities, Internet banking categorically does not accept sending payments via third parties. Each client, for which his own account is fixed, using only his own funds, whether it be accounts for electronic payment systems, bank accounts, credit/debit cards etc. Online banking incurs the bank the right to refuse to conduct operations at any stage, in case of the assumption that a transaction is linked to money laundering.

Adhering to the “Know Your Customer” policy, banks have the right to identify the client’s staff in the online system. In this case, the client must provide two documents detailing:

• A state identification document with an obligatory photograph of the client. This can be an internal passport or passport for travel abroad, a driver’s license (for countries where the driver’s license is a primary document for example, the US) or a local Identity Card (other than corporate access cards).
• A document with an account detailing the full status of customers and their actual addresses on, no older than 3 months. This can be a utility bill, an extract from the bank for an arbitrary period or any other document that indicates the full name of the client and the residential address as indicated in the account profile. Also identification of a suitable personal phone number of the client should be included.

Having passed the identification steps, the account status is automatic, and the client then holds the opportunity to use all the functions of the Internet banking system. To prevent the compromise of personal data, the client downloads documents and information using a secure HTTPS protocol.

Obligations of the service operator to comply with this policy

Obligations of the service provider to comply with the anti-money laundering policy:

• Retaining client operation history for three years.
• Tracking and identifying any suspicious transactions.
• Providing information about the client and his transactions to law enforcement agencies in the relevant service.
• Suspending the suspicious transaction until the circumstances are clarified and the suspicious funds are returned to the source account.
• Refusal to carry out a suspicious operation.