The National Bank is trying to relieve itself of responsibility for the activities of banks that began to illegally block payments of their customers over UAH 5 thousand. There are a lot of similar cases – people have started complaining since the moment the new law on financial monitoring: “On preventing and counteracting the legalization (laundering) of proceeds from crime, the financing of terrorism and the financing of the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction” (No. 361-IX), came into force on April 28, 2020.

According to the new document, people are prohibited from making payments without identification (presenting a document or card) for UAH 5 thousand in contrast to UAH 15 thousand as it was before. However, many banks began to identify customers and also to stop cashless payments, or block money in accounts. Clients have started to appeal to the banks, as well as the National Bank. In a recent interview, the first deputy chairman of the NBU, Kateryna Rozhkova, says that she urged the banks not to hold groundless blocking.

“I hold numerous meetings with banks and always say: just don’t try to stop payments over 5 thousand UAH now. Otherwise, you simply discredit the system,” she tells the media.

However, these are just words and there are no real measures against violating banks. Rozhkova casually mentions upcoming rules that will allegedly minimize abuse. But it’s also not clear when exactly they will appear, how they will work, and who will be affected.

Until this happens, banks will continue to do whatever they wish with the clients’ transfers over UAH 5 thousand. Now it is called the risk-based approach of financial institutions - personal standards that banks choose at their discretion which are not regulated by anything.

Bankers are not worried about violations of the new law. Many of them have been infringing the long-existing rules on the arrest of money in accounts for a long time. The other day Dubinsky.pro wrote about blatant abuses of Privatbank and its chairman Peter Krumkhanzla. This information has been public for more than a month, and the regulator has not responded to this in any way - it simply covers up the violation of existing laws within the walls of the state bank without applying any measures to it.

In her interview, Rozhkova also says that banks can block cash transactions and also inform colleagues about these blockings according to the new law. Which means that they can share customer information. A client might likely have problems with accounts not only in one bank but in all of them.

Andrey Pshenichny for the site dubinsky.pro