Ukraine’s government has reportedly approved the nation’s final draft of a new money laundering law that applies to virtual assets (or cryptocurrencies) and virtual asset service providers (VASPs), according to the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) guidelines.
The Rada, the country’s legislative body, released a final draft of the law on December 6. The new rules qualify virtual assets, or digital currencies, as a store of value or wealth. Virtual assets are also recognized for their potential use to carry out or assist in financial crimes, including money laundering, fraud, and terrorism financing.
The new money laundering law includes certain guidelines regarding how the Ukraine government plans to regulate and extend oversight over cryptocurrency trading. One of the requirements, under the law, focuses specifically on individual virtual asset transactions that are valued at less than 30,000 hriven (appr. $1,300). For these transactions, the nation’s government says it will only obtain the sender’s public key for financial monitoring purposes.
If the transaction amount is greater than 30,000 hriven, then the government will verify both the sender and recipient of the transfer. The process will reportedly include ID verification, and will also attempt to verify the nature (if one exists) of the business relationship between the parties involved in the transaction.
For VASPs that transfers cryptocurrencies, the threshold has been set at 40,000 hryvnya (appr. $1,600). Should transactions be greater than this amount, then VASPs are required to provide the authorities with details such as when traders registered in their respective jurisdictions and whether they’ve complied with AML recommendations. VASPs must also inform authorities about if the traders are family members, whenever traders are foreigners, and also when cash transactions have been made.
