OREANDA-NEWS  After the launch of the anti-money laundering platform "Know your Customer" (KYC) from the Central Bank in Russia, the number of new legal entities increased by 15 percent. Now about a thousand companies open daily in the country — up to half of them may be involved in cashing out as one-day firms, Ilya Yasinsky, director of the Department of Financial Monitoring and Currency Control of the Central Bank, warns in a conversation with RBC.

We are talking about technical companies that register those who specialize in laundering and cashing money. "Every day we identify about 500 technical companies and individual entrepreneurs who are immediately included in the red zone," Yasinsky said. However, the platform, according to him, quickly reacts to the appearance of such firms and deprives them of access to standard banking services.

Russian banks have joined the KYC since July 1, 2022. The platform allows banks to exchange information with the Central Bank about the assigned risk level of clients-legal entities and individual entrepreneurs in terms of conducting suspicious transactions (cashing out or money laundering). Customers are divided into three risk groups according to the traffic light principle: "red" with a high level of risk, "yellow" with medium and "green" with low. Control over the conduct of payment transactions is tightened depending on how high the risks are.

At the end of March, the regulator reported that in recent months, the anti-washing platform had saved 50 billion rubles from being withdrawn into the shade. Since the launch of the system, also known as "traffic light", credit institutions have begun to refuse customers of a high, or "red", risk level to conduct operations four times more often. "Green" clients, on the contrary, began to block transactions 30 percent less often.