Ukraine Passes Law on Money Laundering With Crypto Policy Based on FATF

The Ukrainian government approves the final version of a money laundering law that will handle virtual assets and virtual asset service providers per FATF guidelines.

The Ukranian government has approved the final version of a money laundering law that will handle virtual assets and virtual asset service providers (VASPs) per FATF guidelines.

On Dec. 6, the Rada, Ukraine’s legislative body, published a final version of the law that considers virtual assets to be a store of wealth, while also recognizing its potential use in financial crimes, such as money laundering, fraud, and the financing of terrorists.

The new law includes some guidelines on how the government intends to monitor and regulate the trading of cryptocurrencies. One of the guidelines focuses on individual crypto transactions worth less than 30,000 hriven ($1,300), from which the government will only collect the public key of the sender for the purpose of financial monitoring. 

However, once the transaction exceeds that amount, the government will apply verification to both sender and receiver. The process will include identity verification, as well as the verification of the nature of the business relationship.

For VASP’s the threshold sits above the 40,000 hryvnya ($1,600) price level. In that case VASP’s should provide the authorities with information when traders are registered in jurisdictions that do not comply with anti-money laundering recommendations, when traders are family members, when traders are foreigners, and when cash transactions occur.

Konstantin Yarmolenko of Blockchain4Ukraine provided Cointelegraph with guidance on Ukrainian law in this sector. 

Major global crypto exchange Binance is reportedly collaborating with Ukrainian authorities to establish cryptocurrency-related legislation in the country. Binance signed a memorandum of understanding with the Ministry of Digital Transformation of Ukraine to jointly work on the legal status of cryptocurrencies. Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao (CZ) said in November that the legalization of cryptocurrencies and the adoption of progressive legislation can play a key role in bringing positive growth in the economy as well as attract additional investments.

As part of the agreement, the Ministry and Binance intend to form a working group focused on the strategy of blockchain implementations as well as the creation of “new virtual assets and virtual currencies market in Ukraine.”

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