State Duma is preparing a law on extrajudicial freezing of accounts

The State Duma is actively working to develop a mechanism to protect citizens from fraudulent activities.  Parliamentarians took up a bill that would allow banks to freeze the accounts of so-called droppers without a judicial act.  These are the persons to whose accounts the scammers transfer the funds of their victims before withdrawing them from an ATM.

The legal problem to be solved by the new law is the lack of such a mechanism at present. A court order is required to freeze an account, even if the dropper's account is known.

The legal development will allow the banks to independently carry out such procedures for up to a month.

According to Anatoly Aksakov, who holds the position of chairman of the State Duma Committee on the financial market, work on the bill is being actively carried out, the document may be submitted for consideration to the lower house of parliament as early as this spring, Gazera.ru reports.

Despite the good intentions of the authors of the document, the Central Bank of the Russian Federation has already expressed concern about the initiative. According to the regulator, the innovation may become grounds for abuse, in addition, the legislators have not provided a judicial mechanism for challenging the bank freeze of the account by its owner. The Central Bank believes that the idea proposed by parliamentarians requires detailed study and legal analysis.