Content: Russia’s central bank is set to launch a new AI platform to thwart illegal financial and crypto activities, particularly uncontrolled crypto-to-fiat over-the-counter (OTC) services. This action involves collaboration with Rosfinmonitoring and various other financial institutions to track and block suspicious transactions, thereby preventing the misuse of banking systems.
The platform will focus on identifying individuals known as ‘Mules’ or ‘Droppers’ who use bank accounts for illegal purposes like money laundering, drug trafficking, and unregulated cryptocurrency exchanges.
According to reports, the new system will include information on irregular transactions and will operate AI data analysis along with real-time monitoring to identify high-risk accounts actively. Unlike the traditional systems Know Your Client (KYC) that focus mainly on monitoring business profiles and only react when anonymous activity arises, this automated threat profiling system will assess the risks on an individual basis.
However, In 2023 the Central Bank has observed that cashing out through bank accounts remains a significant challenge, with checks totaling 44.9 billion rubles (approximately $584 million) issued through the accounts. Currently, monitoring is restricted to individual banks, which makes it difficult to prevent criminals from opening accounts at other institutions.
A centralized database is being developed to boost information sharing among all financial institutions. However, no official timeline for its launch has been provided yet.
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