Why Telegram is blocked - the main reasons. Taxes are too low

Useful tips

There is no normal way to block the Internet. It does not exist in nature. An IP address as a way to identify a site or service on the Internet is obvious. It's the most obvious one. You can easily find out your and my IP address. And they begin to block it as the most obvious identifier. Considering that Roskomnadzor are incompetent assholes, there is nothing left to do but to do this in a big way. You can see the consequences of this for yourself.

Google, in addition to being a search engine, provides a bunch of services to provide more quick access to sites, caching and proxying information. Google Servers are available all over the world. Truth in Russia recent months, as far as I know, Google's cache servers were seized. Absolutely random, unpredictable services suffer from this: if you want your service to be available around the world well and quickly, you will certainly use Google cache or Amazon. Due to the fact that Telegram is being hunted by Roskomnadzor, Google and Amazon are being blocked. Absolutely innocent sites suffer. Which ones, you'll never guess. Conventionally, if your TheQuestion is cached through Amazon, you have no way of guessing whether it will be blocked or not.

Telegram cannot be blocked. You can make life worse for a short time, which is what happened yesterday. Perhaps this will continue to happen. I have been actively commenting on this whole story that is happening with messengers for five years now. And for five years I have been saying exactly the same thing: that nothing can be blocked and that it is necessary to increase computer literacy. As a result of this story, Roskomnadzor will simply disgrace itself. This shows that you can put whatever you want on the laws in Russia, because in fact no one follows them. This will be such a war, but Telegram will continue to work, and in general everything will work well.

Over the past few years, we have adopted such convenient legislation that you can block someone, be it a proxy server or TheQuestion, and you can put them in jail. There are several by-laws, there are tools from the prosecutor's office. From a legislative point of view, these tools exist. Proxy servers that try to bypass Telegram blocking are already being blocked. It will be a game of catch-up that will end with a red button. There is one more small point: at first I thought that this whole story would cause protests. But as soon as Telegram began to be blocked, you set up a VPN for yourself, and as soon as your VPN starts working normally, you fall out of RuNet, cease to be its subject, you are not bothered by news about Roskomnadzor. You set everything up and forgot about everything: now your Internet always works normally, what happens there in Russia, what is blocked there and what laws are passed, you don’t care. And Roskomnadzor will actively complain about all sorts of proxy servers and ban large VPNs.

There is such a civil Internet war going on. What Putin, Roskomnadzor, the State Duma and others are doing can be described with the short word “vandalism.” I hope that all the listed citizens will end up in the dock for breaking Runetik, which I have loved for 20 years and in which I live. These people cannot be called anything other than vandals. And the main thing is that all this is against us, citizens: we have a messenger, it’s convenient to use, everything is fine. Some gopniks came and “here, let’s do it.” It is unpredictable how everything will end when in a country everything depends on one person. And while he is alive, perhaps nothing will change. But the ways of God are inscrutable: maybe today we will be lucky.

A statement in which he called Roskomnadzor’s attempts to block Telegram dangerous for the entire Runet, since many global and Russian Internet services were under attack. And this, in turn, “deprives the country of the opportunity to compete technologically in world markets in the future.” Users have already complained about problems Google services, Amazon, Odnoklassniki, Viber, Skype, Spotify and many more sites. In this regard, the Internet began to suspect that “breaking the Runet” was the initial goal of the department and that Russia would soon repeat the experience of China, where the state limits the population’s access to global network. The Village asked experts if this is so and what other versions there are to explain what is happening.

“It’s useful to see what we will lose in the event of a serious mess. I think they got more than enough information to report."

Yuri Sinodov

editor-in-chief of Roem.ru

There are many versions of the reasons for the blocking. The first is that Durov did not share the correspondence of six people who were needed by the FSB, and because of this, Telegram began to be blocked by everyone possible ways. This version does not fit with reality - there are no complaints against Telegram employees in Russia, the application is not blocked in any of the stores. And the resentment itself turns out to be too long - the story stretches back to last summer, and only now the FSB is splashing it out in the form of a blockade? Hardly.

The second version is that Telegram plans to create a financial system that will break everything for us, as RBC wrote about. But this threat does not yet exist. Perhaps the documents allegedly published before the ICO exist, but now it is impossible to say with certainty that an alternative will be created payment system, which will break the Russian economy. Accordingly, the decision to fight with such intensive measures against a threat that has the status of potential is not very clear. I don't believe in this version either.

Roskomnadzor is now hitting anyone, but not Telegram. There are no complaints against the company’s employees located in Russia, although their involvement in the fact that the messenger is maintained is obvious. Telegram was not affected - there was some degradation of the service, some experienced difficulties loading pictures. But degradation and loss of audience are two different things. Telegram audience I didn’t lose it, rather I even gained it, and Durov received excellent PR. Roskomnadzor is now blocking not Telegram, but Western services on which many Russian structures are connected.

Telegram will run like this forever. Roskomnadzor has been blocking for a week different services, but the messenger is working, which means the goal is different: for example, to block these services themselves and see what happens. Testing is going well - now we can clearly see what’s going wrong with us, we can put the brakes on it and write a report.

I lived in Crimea, and not everyone knows, but some sites that are hosted on Google Cloud in Crimea, not available for local providers. That is, this already exists, and if, due to increasing political tension, this happens throughout Russia, then the websites of companies that are essential for us will suffer - Aeroflot sits on Google Cloud, for example. It is useful to see what we will lose in the event of a serious mess. I think they got enough information, more than enough for a report. Gradually, the intensity of blocking will decrease.

“The authorities want to control people so that later they can be repressed for their activities on the Internet”

Kirill Rogov

political scientist

In Russia, due to the impossibility of building a firewall (Internet content filtering system like in China. - Ed.) Russian authorities have taken a different path: they want to have the keys, control people, so that later they can be repressed for their activities on the Internet. This is not pre-censorship, but post-facto censorship, where actions on the Internet will be punished. To do this, they need complete transparency of the Network. Therefore, instead of the Chinese model closed internet the preparation of a repressive system arises. It uses measures that prevent people from accessing any resources. This is the reason why the block was made.

Technical means the authorities do not have the power to cut off these resources. This leads to chaos. They actually blackmail companies into giving them the keys. At the same time, when Durov refused, it turned out that they were not able to fulfill the threats.

After Telegram, it will be very difficult to block Facebook. I don’t know how they will blackmail him; we can come up with different moves.

Although Telegram is available, general Statistics still fell. Companies with a large turnover can be blackmailed by the fact that the period of struggle will be a time of great material losses for them. If they consider that reputational losses mean less to them, they will cooperate with the authorities. On the other hand, if reputation is more important to them, then they will accept temporary business losses and win. In this case, Amazon decisively refused to negotiate, and Google accepted them. If they manage to push him through, he will suffer great reputational losses.

I think events will develop as follows: in the Telegram story, the authorities need to find ways to enforce the court decision. This provides a legal basis for working on coming up with these methods: these may be fragments of the Chinese system, but the fact that it will be built now looks doubtful. The Chinese system was created quite a long time ago; it was initially built into the infrastructure and interaction of networks. For us to build similar system we must take a huge leap back, which, as we see, threatens chaos.

“In Russia, Durov refused to compromise, but in Indonesia he agreed. Maybe it’s politically beneficial for him.”

Ekaterina Shulman

political scientist

Let's do this: Telegram is blocked on the basis of one of the provisions of the Yarovaya Law. One of its norms requires doing something that Telegram refuses to do. This is the legislative basis, so I would not look for other reasons here. This is not a debut. For example, blocking Zello walkie-talkies- then it was possible to block not only the application itself, but also to achieve its removal from online stores.

The state of the authoritarian model requires some guarantees from corporations. A new type of authoritarian state is not a second dictatorship; it is large and rich states with many consumers. For corporations, this is a market they don't want to lose. Now we are at the stage of compromise: everyone is bargaining with everyone.

In Russia, Durov refused to compromise, but in Indonesia he agreed. Because Russia is a special place for him. Maybe this is politically beneficial for him, maybe because he is a patriot and wants goodness and freedom for the citizens of Russia. Compared to Telegram, Facebook is a more powerful network. Telegram occupies a small segment, so you can do this with it, but you can’t do it with YouTube and Facebook. But, on the other hand, this is a double-edged sword - one end for the corporation, the other for the state. Corporations also do not want to lose such a huge market. Therefore, my prediction is this: they will bargain and bargain, unless they decide to make Russia an example of how a bad state behaves badly and punishes its own citizens.

We cannot become a conventional China. China has been carefully building control over the Internet for 20 years, investing in it such funds and resources that we cannot even imagine. And he started this when the Internet was not like that. All our attempts are baby talk compared to what China is doing - we will never catch up with their developed Internet. We can, relatively speaking, be punished by first world corporations so that citizens will begin to be indignant that a bad state has turned off everything in the world. You can follow Durov’s path, refuse to compromise, then government agencies there will be nothing left but to lose face. But this is already going into conspiracy theories; I would bet on the likelihood of reaching compromises, including unspoken ones.

Illustration copyright DMITRY SEREBRYAKOV/AFP Image caption During the evacuation from the Zimnyaya Vishnya shopping center, all exits specially designated for this were blocked

The Russian Ministry of Emergency Situations confirmed that all emergency exits in the burned-out Zimnyaya Vishnya shopping center were closed. The BBC Russian service looked into how things are in other shopping centers throughout Russia.

The ministry published details of the evacuation operation from the Kemerovo shopping center. From the official statement of the department it follows that confusion reigned in the shopping center after the fire started. The head of the fire extinguishing service, Andrei Bursin, who was the first to arrive at the scene of the fire, said: “All emergency exits were closed, every single one.”

The circumstances of the tragedy in Kemerovo provoked a large-scale discussion about fire safety shopping centers. And the issue of accessibility of emergency exits has become one of the main ones.

In Moscow, activist Katrin Nenasheva decided to check how things were going in the Okhotny Ryad shopping center. “In Okhotny Ryad there is some kind of incident with emergency exits - the map indicates that they are there, but in fact on the doors it says “Service entrance” and “Entrance only by cards”. The doors, of course, are closed absolutely everywhere,” she wrote in his post on Facebook. “Everything works for us. Everything. The doors are magnetic and will open on their own in the event of a fire,” a shopping center employee who did not introduce himself reassured Nenasheva.

In other cities, activists and journalists faced the same problem. In Saratov, employees of the online publication Svobodnye Novosti visited three shopping centers, and everywhere the fire escapes were blocked. Administration representatives in one case said that “the key to the emergency exit is with the security guard,” and in another they also explained that in the event of a fire, the doors are unlocked automatically.

Local blogger and journalist Elena Nalimova claims that in one of these shopping centers - Triumph Mall - at least seven emergency exits indicated on the evacuation plan are closed or turned into shops. “This is a gross violation - [in the shopping center] there is a plan that does not coincide with real situation affairs,” she told the BBC Russian Service.

Nalimova says that the shopping center’s sellers complained to her: during the last fire alarm, when a car in the parking lot caught fire, people were taken out of Triumph Mall along narrow, non-functioning escalators. Joint official inspections of shopping centers are currently underway in the Saratov region.

In Voronezh, the founder of the VKontakte community Voot, Vladimir Blagodyrev, discovered magnetically locked fire exits in two shopping centers.

In one of them, he managed to get onto the emergency staircase only on the fourth floor - the doors on the second and third were closed. In the second mall, Blagodyrev found several doors locked with a key, but most of the exits, as it turned out, were still equipped with magnetic locks. They open if there is a power supply, the activist told the BBC Russian Service.

Children's room. Escape routes

The management of Winter Cherry was also accused of the fact that the children's center was on the top floor. Although, according to standards, children's areas in shopping centers and other public buildings should be located no higher than the second floor, so that it is easier to evacuate children. The SNiPs (building codes and regulations) regulating this were adopted in 2009.

In reality, most shopping centers in Russia place such zones on the top floors. The rent on the first floors is higher, and children's institutions cannot afford it.

For example, in Moscow's Aviapark, the largest shopping center in Europe, on the third and fourth floors there is the Kidzania park, the Pautinka and Zabava centers. Permission for this must be obtained from the Ministry of Emergency Situations and the Ministry of Construction.

As the Aviapark administration explained, inspectors carried out a fire risk assessment. "The assessment takes everything into account possible models behavior of people at the maximum occupancy of the building - about 100 thousand people at a time,” said a representative of the shopping center.

In malls located in Moscow and the Moscow region, owners often prefer an “Anti-panic” type system to magnetic locks: it allows you to freely open the door from the inside in the direction of travel, simply by pressing the longitudinal handle. It cannot be opened from the outside.

An interlocutor of the BBC Russian Service, Dmitry, who worked for a long time in a large shopping center in the Moscow region, says that there were exits on all floors equipped with an “Anti-panic” type mechanism.

The management of the complex, according to him, closely monitored that evacuation routes were always clear, and immediately fined tenants for things left in the passages.

Now Dmitry works in a construction hypermarket, where some time ago there was an unscheduled evacuation. People went out to the open fire exits without any problems, he says.

Do they contradict or complement?

At the same time, the need to provide access to emergency exits conflicts with other requirements when it comes to shopping and entertainment complexes, journalist and architectural critic Grigory Revzin is convinced.

“I once resigned from the Moscow City Council because we were constantly forced to approve shopping centers there,” - writes Revzin on your Facebook.

According to the critic, in the issue of organizing the work of shopping centers, three conflicting protocols collide.

"The firefighter requires maximum speed evacuation and maximum quantity exits. But anti-terrorism security protocol requires making entry difficult and checking everyone who enters. And the security protocol against thieves requires making it difficult to exit, slowing down the exit and the possibility of verification. Hence, the entrances and exits that are unnecessary from the point of view of the safety of people and goods simply cannot but be closed. They are closed everywhere."

Experts interviewed by the BBC claim that fire regulations and anti-terrorism security measures do not contradict each other. “The legislator specially thought through everything, and some requirements complement others,” explained Evgenia Baranova, a representative of the press service of SERCONS Group of Companies (the company deals with certification in the field of industrial and fire safety). According to her, [evacuation] exits must be open whenever there are people in the building.

Baranova explained that one of the common ways to organize quick evacuation from inside a building and at the same time protection from unauthorized entry from outside is “Anti-panic” doors.

Director large network restaurants in Moscow, who wished to remain anonymous, in a conversation with the BBC Russian Service called it nonsense to assume that certain anti-terrorism security standards require tenants to lock emergency doors. "On the contrary, everyone **** [extremely insistently demands - BBC] to keep all exits open."

“They are afraid of theft” and “they save money”

However, from judicial practice it is obvious that there are problems with fire safety V in public places available in many regions of Russia.

The database of court cases of the RosPravosudie project easily contains dozens of administrative cases that were received by the courts after fire and anti-terrorist safety inspections. Supervisory authorities often encounter the same violations that activists encountered in Saratov and Voronezh.

For example, in 2016, a court in Nevelsk found that in a local shopping center there were no emergency exits at all on the second and third floors. The authority ordered the shopping center to provide evacuation routes.

It can be assumed that the shopping center employees are not blocking emergency exits (if they exist) out of oversight. In one of the complexes that Voronezh social activist Blagodyrev visited, the locked doors were explained to him by the fact that they were “afraid of theft.”

“One anti-panic system handle costs 3-7 thousand rubles. Imagine there are a thousand doors in a shopping mall. Due to their quantity, the cost is significant. Since there are no regulations in Russia that oblige the installation of “anti-panic”, many developers try to save on them. Many buildings use the very dangerous practice of locking doors with plastic cable clamps. This is done, for example, so that it is impossible to steal goods and leave the hall through the emergency exit unnoticed. Instead, it would be possible to use engineering security systems - sirens that are triggered when an illegal opening occurs,” says Szymon Matkowski, partner of the international architectural bureau Blank Architects. Such sirens are automatically turned off in the event of an alarm.

Engineering and architectural measures are not enough. According to Matkovsky, employees of shopping centers must act very competently in the event of an alarm, directing people to emergency exits. The visitors themselves may not know where they are located, and in panic they will try to leave the building the same way they came.

"No better way train employees on how to organize training alarms in a working building. But imagine, on Saturday, with the shops and cinemas full, we kick everyone out of the building. These are huge costs that require monetary compensation. That's why building managers don't do them," he says.

Blocking the current accounts of organizations and individual entrepreneurs is one of the most effective mechanisms for the state to combat tax evasion and money laundering. For greater efficiency In such a struggle, the state actively involves credit organizations in it. The provisions of Federal Law No. 115 “On combating the legalization (laundering) of proceeds from crime and the financing of terrorism” actually require banks to monitor their clients in the same way as government agencies do.

For failure to comply with the requirements of anti-money laundering legislation, the bank may face serious consequences, including revocation of its license. Because of this, such procedures on the part of banks have lost their formal status and have significantly complicated the situation for entrepreneurs. According to the public organization " Business Russia", since the beginning of the year alone, banks have blocked 500,000 accounts of companies and individual entrepreneurs. Even if we assume that this figure is overestimated by ten times, we can still talk about the massive use of account blocking by banks.

In any doubtful situations, banks are reinsured. They prefer to block the current account of an organization or individual entrepreneur until the circumstances are clarified. In some cases, entrepreneurs who have nothing to do with criminal schemes may be targeted. There are at least four criteria by which transactions of a bona fide client can be considered questionable.

Taxes are too low

Currently minimum size The taxes that an entrepreneur must pay to the budget, according to banks, are at least 0.9% of the total turnover. If for some reason not related to tax evasion (for example, bad financial results), the volume of tax payments will be less than the specified threshold, the bank may block the client’s current account.

When using several accounts opened in different banks, a problem may arise for an entrepreneur who is not formally in the risk group. If an organization pays tax payments from one account, then banks in which other accounts are open and actively used simply do not see them. This may result in blocking. The problem can be solved by providing the bank with information about the payment of tax payments from other accounts of the organization.

Withdrawing millions in cash

Attempts to withdraw large sums of money from the account directly or through the accounts of individual entrepreneurs will most likely end in blocking the accounts. It's about about schemes of the format “the organization transfers 5 million rubles to the account of an individual entrepreneur, the next day he withdraws the entire amount in cash.”

The result is predictable: blocking of both the organization’s and individual entrepreneurs’ accounts. This will be followed by a long debriefing on the part of the bank: a request for documents and information; finding out what economic goals determine such a scheme.

Absence of employees

If an organization with high turnover has no employees, except general director, then this gives reason to assume the fictitious nature of the work. Banks apply a similar approach to individual entrepreneurs.

A situation in which an individual entrepreneur copes alone seems normal - that’s why he is an individual entrepreneur. But this is typical for microbusinesses. If tens of millions of rubles pass through the accounts of an individual entrepreneur for some goods, work or services and he does not need hired employees to carry out such activities, then this quite reasonably raises questions from banks and regulatory authorities.

In such a situation, the account may be blocked and the necessary explanations and documents may be requested. To unblock the account, the manager will need to provide detailed explanations about his activities: what he does, whether there is an office, who the clients are, how the work is structured, and so on. If the explanation sounds plausible, the entrepreneur will probably be left alone. If not, the account will be blocked.

Entry in the Unified State Register of Legal Entities

Record of inaccuracy of information in single register The Unified State Register of Legal Entities is entered for many reasons. For example, if the tax authorities discover a discrepancy between the actual and legal addresses of the company. Or if the address contains inaccuracies: for example, the documents indicate the house number, but the office number is not stated.

Such an entry suggests a possible exception legal entity from the Unified State Register of Legal Entities and a ban on any registration actions for the founders and head of the company. The tax authority may send information about unreliability to the bank, which has the right to suspend operations or terminate the agreement.

Will another bank bail out?

Under the current conditions, the most effective method struggle is opening an account in another bank. As a rule, a bank that has blocked transactions under Law No. 115 refuses further service to the client. True, transferring money from a frozen account turns out to be difficult in practice: upon learning about the blocking, other banks may refuse the problem client.

This is due to the Bank of Russia’s regulation No. 550-P dated July 20, 2016. It regulates the procedure for summarizing information about organizations carrying out dubious transactions. Getting into such a blacklist in most cases entails automatic blocking organization accounts opened in all banks, as well as the inability to open a new account.

The situation is deadlock: the bank has blocked the account and offers to send the balance Money to an organization’s account opened in any other bank, and it is not possible to open a new account. Sometimes in such a situation, opening an account in a small bank outside the top hundred can save you. Such banks have even learned to build a business on this: in some structures they deliberately weakened control in order to attract “problem” clients.

The problem can arise even if the organization or individual entrepreneur has not managed to get blacklisted. In 2018, the very wording “transfer of own funds in connection with the closure of an account” can lead to instant blocking of money received into an account at another bank. Such wording gives the new bank information that the money is not transferred voluntarily, but as a result of blocking under Law No. 115.

One of the most discussed topics in the business community in the past year is the blocking of accounts by banks. At least 500 thousand entrepreneurs faced this problem in a year. A bank account can be blocked for almost anything, and returning to normal service is often only possible through a lengthy legal appeal procedure.

Why do massive blockings of business accounts occur and how to avoid it? Rusbase collected real stories entrepreneurs and expert advice.

“The situation is causing indignation”

The Business Russia organization has calculated that since the beginning of the year, banks in the country have blocked at least half a million accounts. That is, 500 thousand companies and entrepreneurs stopped making and accepting payments and were unable to conduct their business normally. Business Ombudsman Boris Titov has already intervened in the situation, saying that back in October he received at least two requests a week related to extrajudicial blocking of bank accounts. The Commissioner for Entrepreneurs' Rights approached the Central Bank with a proposal to create a clear mechanism for excluding organizations from the “black list.”

The list of organizations and entrepreneurs who, for one reason or another, have been refused service by banks, is compiled by the Central Bank based on information from Rosfinmonitoring. It is sent to credit institutions, which at their own discretion refuse to provide services to those on the list.

One of the entrepreneurs who apparently ended up on this “black list” was Petr Kondaurov, founder of the Petr Kondaurov Reengineering Studio. He was serviced by Tinkoff Bank and until recently was quite pleased. All payments to Kondaurov’s company were transparent and supported by relevant documents.

But one day the businessman received an SMS from the bank demanding to close the account and withdraw funds. According to the entrepreneur, the employees did not explain to him the reason for this decision. The companies were simply left with no choice - after paying a decent commission, the money had to be transferred to another bank. The business suffered losses and problems arose with counterparties.

Petr Kondaurov

The overall situation is causing fear and resentment. When you can be deprived of the opportunity to run a business without trial or investigation. When your finely tuned machine of relationships with clients and performers, which feeds your family and children, can be shut down on the basis of suspicion alone at a time when you did not violate any laws or rules, without the right to even justify yourself and prove your non-involvement in fraud and terrorist activities actions.

According to entrepreneurs who have faced blocking of their current account, banks often do not explain anything. Being included in the “black list” becomes something of a stigma for companies: most likely, they will not open an account in other banks either.

Petr Kondaurov

Founder of Peter Kondaurov's Reengineering Studio

A bank without a trial can blacklist you under 115-FZ, and then not a single bank will open an account for you, effectively depriving you of the opportunity to legally earn money. What to do then? It’s a pity that there aren’t enough IPs to organize protests. Before the elections, I think they would have been listened to.

Now the entrepreneur is looking for another bank and hopes that they will first sort it out and negotiate, and not close the account without listening to the client’s arguments.

Anyone can be blocked

The reason for the surge in account blocking in 2017 was new recommendations issued by the Central Bank of Russia. The lengthy document describes the signs on the basis of which banks can identify “suspicious” actions of legal entities. Here are just a few of them:

transit nature of funds transfers;
payment of taxes in the amount of less than 0.9% of turnover on the current account, operations aimed at minimizing the tax burden;
no wages are paid from the account;
account balances are not comparable with turnover;
there is a contradiction between the basis of payments, costs and activities of the organization;
there are no payments within the framework of the client’s business activities (rent payments, public utilities and others);
more than 30% of cash turnover;
less than 2 years have passed since the date of creation of the legal entity;
regular cash withdrawals, usually in an amount not exceeding 600 thousand rubles and using corporate bank cards.

That is, as you can see, it is quite difficult to avoid at least one of the listed “violations”. Therefore, almost all entrepreneurs have the risk of being blocked.

Senior partner of the law firm "Titov, Kuzmin and Partners" Andrey Kuzmin believes that mass blockings led by the desire of banks to reinsure themselves. In general, the legal basis for extrajudicial blocking of an account is the federal law No. 115 “On combating the legalization (laundering) of proceeds from crime and the financing of terrorism.” Based on this law, Rosfinmonitoring compiles its “black list”, which includes companies convicted of illegal transactions - financing terrorism and money laundering. It is impossible to get on this list by chance, since the reasons must be quite serious. The vast majority of entrepreneurs face blocking for other reasons. They are described in the very new recommendations of the Central Bank. But the banks took them not as a recommendation, but as a guide to action. And they began to block everyone, “just in case.”

Andrey Kuzmin

Senior partner

"Titov, Kuzmin and partners"

There is no way to avoid claims 100%. Even our law office once had questions when we were paying dues to the Bar Association. Sometimes harmless operations cause suspicion. Thus, one of our clients had their operation to pay bonuses to employees blocked. It happens that transactions involving the purchase of expensive objects, such as equipment or real estate, cause suspicion.

Editor of the Bankir.ru portal Elena Gosteva agrees that the Central Bank’s recommendations contain points that, if interpreted appropriately, provide grounds for blocking the account of any company:

Elena Gosteva

Editor of Bankir.ru

The most common cases of blocking are when one type of activity is specified in the company’s statutory documents, but the payment comes for completely different services. For example, your charter says: “production of dumplings,” and the payment comes for the provision of consulting services. And the bank will not care that you, as an entrepreneur, advised someone specifically on the issue of dumpling production.

Founder of a company that develops a service for retail i-Retail Kirill Voytsekhovich-Kazantsev says that not only many of his clients, but also he himself have faced blocking of accounts. From the negative experience, the entrepreneur made a disappointing conclusion: it is almost impossible to prove that he is right to the banks, and you can unblock an account only if you have influential connections in the bank itself:

Kirill Voitsekhovich-Kazantsev

Founder

If an account is blocked, there is practically no chance to defend one’s case... If financial monitoring for some reason does not like the operations of a legal entity, the account can be blocked absolutely empty space, motivating this most often by simple suspicion. This is a very convenient formulation when there are no obvious signs of violations and there is no need to explain anything. No one will deal with the entrepreneur, they simply block the account and that’s it.

In his opinion, the worst situation is for Internet entrepreneurs who care about the speed of payments. If a company that works with online orders processes payments quickly, then this alone may put it on the list of suspicious ones. The conservatism of the employees of the supervisory departments themselves also plays a certain role, the businessman believes.

Kirill Voitsekhovich-Kazantsev

Founder

The head of the Komissarov and Partners bar association, Andrei Komissarov, says that banks proceed from the “presumption of guilt” of entrepreneurs:

Andrey Komissarov

Head of the Collegium of Lawyers "Commissars and Partners"

The Central Bank has repeatedly indicated that the presence of a company on the “black list” is not an independent basis for refusing to work with it. However, in fact, there is a presumption of bad faith on the part of the client. In most cases, a company, especially when automating the process, may immediately encounter denials of service under the contract, and banks will not bother to conduct a comprehensive analysis of a specific client operation, as required by the regulator... Almost any company can suffer from the suspension of operations under accounts, closing remote access to the Internet bank and other restrictive measures, often without receiving any warnings, explanations or being content with meaningless language about suspicious transactions.

It turns out that blocking of entrepreneurs' accounts is often associated with subjective factors: the bank simply does not like what you are doing. And if so, it means that entrepreneurs will have to adapt for some time (until the development of an effective unlocking mechanism) and learn to avoid actions that vigilant banks may regard as a reason for inclusion in the “black list”.

How to avoid account blocking

Unconditional blocking of an account, that is, suspension of all banking transactions on it, is possible only if the organization or individual is included in the list of persons involved in extremist activities or terrorism. This is the same “black list” of Rosfinmonitoring, which is published on the agency’s website. Most conscientious entrepreneurs will not find themselves there. But, as we managed to find out, there are many other reasons for refusing to carry out transactions on accounts and subsequent blocking.

According to the rules of most banks, an entrepreneur’s current account is not blocked immediately after a suspicious transaction is detected. To begin with, the bank can suspend the transaction itself or prohibit it from being carried out.

Suspension of an account transaction is possible if the bank suspects that the transaction is being carried out on a dubious transaction.
A refusal to carry out a transaction is possible if the client has not confirmed the purity of the transaction. The bank may also ask to terminate the current account agreement - and this, strictly speaking, is also not a blocking.

According to Lead Counsel law firm Alta Via Oleg Kharechko, an entrepreneur can always challenge any action of the bank in court. True, this can take a lot of time:

Oleg Kharechko

Leading legal consultant at Alta Via law firm

Any blocking of account transactions made by the bank can be challenged either by filing a complaint with the Central Bank of the Russian Federation or in court. In the latter case, you can not only challenge the actions of the bank, but also sue it for improper execution of the bank account agreement with subsequent recovery of damages caused. For example, a bank has the right to completely block an account for all transactions only if the entrepreneur is on the list of persons involved in extremist activities and terrorism.

In all other cases, complete blocking is possible only by Rosfinmonitoring for a period of a month during an inspection or by court decision. Therefore, if an entrepreneur’s account is blocked, but he is not on the list of prohibited persons, the blocking can be challenged. Difficulties arise mainly due to the fact that court proceedings last for months, while for the client even a couple of days of delay in conducting banking transaction may be critical.

Managing Director of Heritage Group Olga Kirillova reminds that banks, as a rule, first send a notice to the entrepreneur and ask to provide documents if a particular operation has raised their suspicions:

Olga Kirillova

Managing Director of Heritage Group

Requests for the provision of documents are sent either by e-mail, or through the online banking communication system. These must be collected and submitted as quickly as possible to prevent account blocking. Unblocking an account is a long and difficult procedure, and you will not always be able to prove to the bank that the company is bona fide. It is much easier to prevent such a situation by carefully conducting transactions on your current account.

At the same time, as lawyer Andrei Kuzmin emphasizes, refusal to carry out an operation is also a dangerous phenomenon. “Two refusals in a year - and the bank has grounds for terminating the bank account agreement,” says the lawyer.

To avoid suspicion from the bank, entrepreneurs, according to experts surveyed by Rusbase, need to follow several rules:

check counterparties and avoid contacts with fly-by-night companies;
be on legal address or at least receive mail there;
pay attention to payment purposes. It should be clear from them what the payment is for;
Moderate cash withdrawals and loans individuals;
do not separate current accounts into those from which taxes are paid and those used for main activities;
the tax burden should be more than 0.9% of turnover.

Regular transfers of money to individuals and individual entrepreneurs, transfers of money to foreign counterparties without simultaneous payment of VAT, and quick write-off of received funds may also seem suspicious. It is considered extremely dangerous to pay bills for third parties. “In this case, blocking occurs instantly,” warns Olga Kirillova.

Natalya Kordyukova, deputy director of the international tax planning department at the Cliff law firm, says that companies that are associated with counterparties - foreign entities, especially from offshore companies or associated with political activities - come under suspicion. Also at risk are those organizations that are not located at the place of registration or do not have a website. Banks pay increased attention to those who work in “dubious” industries: these are betting shops, pawnshops, charitable organizations, companies involved in the trade of precious metals and cars.

The main thing that experts advise is to provide banks with all the information upon the first request. Most likely, having received a legal justification for the “dubious” operation, the bank will allow it to be carried out and will withdraw all claims.

Andrey Kuzmin

Senior partner

"Titov, Kuzmin and partners"

However, sometimes the situation becomes more complicated. For example, the bank sent a request, the documents were provided, but the block was not lifted. In this case, you need to come to the bank office and find out the reasons. It happens that they didn’t even look at the documents. Sometimes you may receive an offer to terminate the bank account agreement by agreement of the parties. As a rule, you should not refuse such offers, since the bank may initiate a forced cancellation of the agreement with the organization being blacklisted.

What the banks say

The owner of the online electronics store Video-Shoper.ru Nikolai Fedotkin also faced blocking of his account. He is a client of a bank that is in the top 10 by assets, which one day blocked the ability to make payments to the company’s current account. According to the entrepreneur, the bank’s specialists did not explain the reasons for the suspension of transactions and did not even accept documents from him that confirm the legality of the business.

“We don’t need any letters or documents from you. We won’t look at anything, your Internet bank is blocked, we don’t give any explanations, you can now only work through the branch on Savelovskaya or you can withdraw your money,”

- Fedotkin quotes the words of employees.

As a result, the entrepreneur was offered to withdraw money from the account with a commission of 25%. And this is 1 million rubles. Another option is to close your current account and transfer funds to a new one. In response, the entrepreneur decided to change the service bank altogether.

Modulbank recently conducted a study in which it analyzed the main reasons for blocking the accounts of entrepreneurs. It turned out that in 100% of cases the companies fell under two or more criteria of “suspiciousness” listed in the recommendations of the Central Bank. Here are some other findings from this study:

70% of companies whose accounts were blocked this year did not pay additional personal income tax based on the results of transfers to individuals;
55% of blocked companies withdrew money from their accounts abnormally quickly, without ever delaying it;
50% of companies worked with unreliable counterparties;
45% of entrepreneurs paid taxes in small amounts, incomparable with the scale and type of business;
38% of companies previously came to the attention of Rosfinmonitoring due to problems with service in banks;
35% of companies paid insufficient VAT;
9% of companies withdrew too much cash.

The bank is obliged to add such a client to the list of so-called “refusers” and inform the regulator about this. But put yourself in the bank's shoes. It is impossible to open an account on formal grounds, and it is also not allowed to refuse a client. Banks found a way out of the situation. The operator will ask you for a large amount of additional documentation, and this will automatically scare away the client. Or he will simply inform you that the application is still pending. And you can receive this status for months until you get tired of waiting and go to open an account at another bank.

The expert advises to be prepared for the bank to ask a lot of questions. Then all that remains is to prove that you are clean before the law. Operating companies can provide tax documentation, detailed accounting, recommendations from counterparties, documents from other banks - everything that will demonstrate law-abidingness and goodwill.

The Central Bank and Rosfinmonitoring, under pressure from the business community, agreed to develop an algorithm for the rehabilitation of companies included in the stop list. Perhaps the mechanism will start operating in 2018.

Olga Kirillova, managing director of Heritage Group: “The problem is that Rosfinmonitoring and the Central Bank have not yet created a mechanism for the rehabilitation of clients who are blacklisted. Because previously the only people on the blacklist were terrorists, drug dealers, arms dealers and slave traders who were not subject to rehabilitation. Amendments to the legislation are now being prepared that could help bona fide companies that have been blacklisted due to the excessive zeal of banks.”

Until then, any company can suddenly find itself among the growing army of blocked ones, even if the business is as transparent as a mountain stream, and the founder is as pure as the Pope. Leading legal adviser at Alta Via Oleg Kharechko believes that at this stage entrepreneurs can only fight for their rights privately - demand that Rosfinmonitoring and the Central Bank remove themselves from the “black list” and hope not to get on it again.