The Ministry of Finance announced, on 21 February 2022, that it had submitted the draft federal law 'On Digital Currency' to the Government of the Russian Federation on 18 February 2022. In particular, the Ministry highlighted the draft law seeks to regulate the circulation of digital currencies, and that under the draft law, the use of digital currencies as a means of payment in the Russian Federation will continue to be prohibited and be considered solely as an investment vehicle. More specifically, the Ministry outlined the draft law defines requirements for exchanges and operators that carry out activities related to digital currencies, with requirements relating to corporate governance, reporting, information storage, and internal controls.

In addition, the Ministry noted operations related to the purchase and sale of cryptocurrency will only be possible if clients are identified, and that customer identification will be carried out both by operators when accepting customers for service, and by banks when opening accounts. Further to this, the Ministry detailed that operators will be required to maintain registers indicating the addresses and identifiers of each holder of digital currency, with the draft law providing for maintenance of registers of such information.

You can read the press release, only available in Russian, here.