On Sept. 4, the Senate, the upper house of parliament, approved a law on combating the legalization (laundering) of income. The document has been passed on to the president for signature. One of its provisions requires the verification of suspicious money transfers.
Definition of «suspicious activity» introduced
The law, for example, introduces the concept of «suspicious activity.» Authorities will assess whether an activity is suspicious based on the frequency, amounts and recipients of transfers. If the same amount is received daily into the same account, such transactions will be subject to verification. Further work with them will be carried out by the Financial Monitoring Agency (FMA) of the Republic of Kazakhstan. The FMA is expected to provide more precise criteria for what constitutes a «suspicious» transfer at a later stage.
Furthermore, the new law authorizes mobile operators, the state corporation «Government for Citizens,» and the Social Health Insurance Fund to become key elements in financial monitoring.
Lawmakers aim to strengthen transaction tracking
Thus, mobile operators will transmit data on mobile balance replenishments, and «Government for Citizens» will transmit data on real estate transactions worth over $92,700, in the same way it already reports notary transactions. Lawmakers believe that these measures will help identify and prevent suspicious transactions more effectively.
The law also introduces a scoring system — an automated risk assessment tool to be used by financial monitoring entities as an additional mechanism for due diligence on customers, their representatives and beneficial owners.
The amendments also set a threshold of 5 million tenge ($9,270) for all transactions involving digital assets that are subject to financial monitoring. At the same time, the threshold for cash transactions with cultural valuables has been reduced from 45 million tenge ($83,445) to 1 million tenge ($1,854). According to experts, this measure is designed to mitigate the risk of unauthorized export of relatively inexpensive items that may hold significant cultural or historical value.
Additionally, the new legislation increases the requirements for future heads of financial institutions. Anyone related to individuals involved in laundering criminal proceeds or financing terrorism will not be eligible for such positions.
