Valeria Gulyakina assessed for NP the efficiency of the Bank of Russia’s platform for checking counterparties

Russian companies now have an opportunity to find out what their own reputation looks like from the Bank of Russia’s point of view. The regulator’s platform ‘Know Your Client’, unofficially called ‘traffic light’, was launched two years ago. But until now, the accumulated information on corporate clients was available only to the Bank of Russia and credit organisations, which could block accounts even without warning. Since 1 October, information on the classification of legal entities to one or another risk group has become available to all interested parties.

However, analysts warn that the Bank of Russia’s service cannot be the only means of checking counterparties. ‘The absence of information on the classification of a new partner to a high risk group does not remove the obligation of market participants to check information about him using open sources. The mark of unreliable information in the Unified State Register of Legal Entities, tax debts, location at the address of mass registration, failure to submit reports and so on may indicate bad faith,’ Valeria Gulyakina, Junior Associate of Tax and Administrative Law Practice at Maxima Legal, explained to Novy Prospect.

According to the expert, although the regulator has the greatest awareness of banking operations, ‘Meanwhile, the “traffic light” signal is optional for credit organisations. They must independently assign a risk group to each corporate client on the basis of internal control’.

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