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The defendant in the case was accused of possession of precursors of narcotic drugs, as well as the production of mephedrone. He received money from buyers in the form of cryptocurrency, which he converted into rubles and transferred to the accounts of his partner’s daughter.
The court of the first instance ruled that converting bitcoins into rubles and transferring them to bank cards without using them in economic turnover did not equal the concept of illegally obtained income.
However, the prosecutor’s office disagreed with the decision and appealed to the Supreme Court. Prosecutors explained that the defendant transferred money from the virtual account to bank cards, giving them the appearance of legal funds. Thus, he legalized more than 8 million rubles and avoided bank supervision.
“Thus, the method chosen (by the accused) of obtaining funds through successive financial and banking transactions, namely, crediting money to a controlled virtual account – cryptocurrency “bitcoin”, its further conversion through various virtual exchangers into rubles, transfer of funds to bank cards registered to another person and cashing them out through bank terminals, indicates that the convicted person had a goal to legalize funds,” the Supreme Court then said
The court noted that responsibility under Article 174.1 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation on legalization of criminal proceeds comes after financial transactions with the purpose of giving the appearance of legal possession, use and disposal.
Andrei Tuzov, head of the criminal law practice at AB EPAM in St. Petersburg, told RAPSI that Russian courts now already perceive cryptocurrency as a means of payment and property. He believes that in the near future “the judicial understanding that cryptocurrency is property, and that it is possible to make transactions with it, including payment transactions, will finally take hold.
Recently, Anatoly Aksakov, chairman of the State Duma Committee on Financial Market, assured that after the legalization of cryptocurrencies, all transactions with digital assets will be “under the hood.”
Incidentally, the latest CCData data shows that Russians were actively exchanging rubles for Tether stabelcoin during the brief mutiny of Yevgeny Prigozhin, head of the Wagner PMC, this weekend;