ASTANA, 10 December – Source: Novosty-Kazakhstan IA. Kazakhstan Agency for Struggle against Economic Crimes and Corruption (Financial Police) offers to limit a one-time cash withdrawal by individuals to the amount of 3000 monthly calculation indexes or 5.2 million tenge, Denis Shakenov, the head of the department for the disclosure and prevention of corruption cases said on Tuesday.
“We offer to legally limit the amount allowed to withdraw from personal accounts of legal entities or individuals per month. The threshold: for individuals 3000 MCI, or about 5.2 million tenge, for legal entities – 10,000 MCI, or about 17.3 million tenge,» he said at a meeting of public council on anti-corruption and the shadow economy.

“For this, we can recommend the second tier banks to reduce the maximum fee for the service of clearing operations, while improving commission for cashing funds that would eliminate the desire of clients to cash it. The proposed step would lead to transparency in financial transactions, and as a result, reduce the shadow economy “, he said.

In addition, a representative of the financial police predicted that after the introduction of such a measure “contributions to the budget will significantly increase, and favorable conditions for the further development of the banking system will be created.” “The introduction of restrictions on cash settlements suppresses the possibility of legalization of income illegally obtained. Thus a basis for bribery and embezzlement of budget funds will be excluded, the possibility of financing terrorist and extremist groups organized criminal groups will be complicated,” he stressed.

Shakenov noticed that, the financial police representative believe that: one of the essential conditions for the spread of corruption in the country is “unlimited withdrawal of funds.” “According to the National Bank, for 10 months, legal entities have cashed 1.2 trillion tenge. The largest volumes of funds were cashed in the cities of Almaty and Astana, South Kazakhstan and Karaganda region”, he said.

According to him, the majority of funds are cashed in the performance of services, works and supplies of various goods. “At the same time, everyone understands that cash in such a large scale, as a rule, used for bribes as kickbacks. Among 1862 corruption crimes identified by the financial police during 11 months of the current year, a quarter is bribery. This is 454 crimes “, the Head of the Department said.

“Huge amounts of money resulting from embezzlement of budgetary funds, tax evasion are taken away by means of shadow turnover through pseudo enterprise. Flow of large amounts of cash creates a threat to national security, so that track their movement is not possible. This does not preclude their use for funding of terrorism and extremism.

European countries are taking active measures to drastically reduce and restrict the flow of cash. For example, in late 2011, the Italian government has banned cash transactions of more than one thousand Euros in order to improve tax collection, since due to the shadow turnover Italian budget annually loses about 120 billion Euros. USA, France, Belgium, Mexico imposed restrictions on the payment of cash, the amount of which varies from 1 to 20 thousand US dollars”,  Shakenov concluded.

Source: Novosty-Kazakhstan IA