ALEXANDER PAVLOVSKY, PARTNER OF A.T. LEGAL.

Against the background of Rosfinmonitoring's plans to allow the Interior Ministry and the Federal Security Service to temporarily block transfers of citizens on suspicion of wrongdoing, RTM Group lawyers analyzed how citizens were able to challenge blockages and denied services last year.

The hot topic of this autumn is the Rosfinmonitoring's new plans to block accounts and transfers of citizens. The bill submitted to the State Duma for discussion gives the power to block transfers temporarily (for up to ten days) by the law enforcement agencies: the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the Federal Security Service. They can supplement the blocking with a court action to demand to block the account on a more fundamental basis. It sounds rather radical, but in practice it is just another twist on the roller coaster of the Russian banking regulation in recent years.

On the Banki.ru forum one can indeed observe the peak of user complaints in some years. But along with the blocking activity of banks, the resistance of customers who are not afraid to defend their rights in court is also growing. RTM Group (the group of expert companies) published interesting research on this topic. According to the Group's Center for Judicial Expertise, in 2020, the number of citizens going to court to protest against the blocking of accounts or denial of banking services increased by almost 3%. Court decisions are split roughly 50/50. In addition to restoring justice, winners also manage to compensate for losses - last year, the courts ordered banks to pay unfairly blocked customers more than 70 million rubles in compensation for unaccrued interest on deposits, etc.

Why, after five years of intense rule-making by the regulator and an impressive percentage of claims lost by banks, citizens still have to go to court? Why can't the banks clearly explain to clients the reasons for blocking or refusal and give them the opportunity to eliminate them quietly? Alexander Pavlovsky, A.T.Legal Partner, answered these and other important questions for Banki.ru - what are the discrepancies between the declared reasons for blocking and the actual triggers? What are the successful methods of contestation, how much they cost, how much time they take? And what should ordinary people expect?

Alexander Pavlovsky: "In the practice of relations between citizens and banks it is not uncommon for banks to refuse to provide services (to conduct banking operations, to open accounts, etc.). The current legislation has a huge number of grounds on which banks can limit operations on accounts or refuse to work with one or another person. Every bank client has the right to get information about the reasons for such behavior of the credit institution. The latter, in turn, usually cites certain provisions of federal law. But quite often banks do not disclose the real reasons of their actions, which may be caused by nuances of internal security control system operation and even personal enmity of a bank official to a particular client. For example, legislation on combating the laundering of proceeds of crime gives banks extremely broad powers to qualify a banking operation as suspicious. Recently the RF Central Bank stopped the vicious practice of some banks that refused to carry out banking operations only on the grounds that other banks had made similar decisions for the same clients.

Unlawful actions of banks need to be contested, both through a special mechanism in certain areas (for example, via the Interdepartmental Commission on 115-FZ) and general ways to protect violated rights (prosecutor's office, courts, etc.). In each specific case, the prospects of contestation are determined individually, taking into account the circumstances of the case. Accordingly, and the price for "solving the issue" will depend on a set of factors: the complexity of the case, rates of lawyers, the chosen method of protection, etc. The existing methods of jurisdictional protection give the citizens sufficient leverage against the banks in case of violations of law and other abuses.” - noted the lawyer.

You can find out the expert's opinion and the situation in the article here: https://www.banki.ru/news/daytheme/?id=10955063