![]() Source: Open News Agency Five court hearings, four letters to the Federal Financial Monitoring Agency and more than 10 appeals to the bank since the beginning of April 2013 were needed for Ivan Moseev, director of the Centre of Strategic Studies at the Northern (Arctic) Federal University, to gain access to his own money via his Sberbank card. Today he told Agora that one year on he had finally succeeded in getting access to his money. Because of a comment ascribed to him on a forum, Ivan Moseev was found guilty last year of humiliating the dignity of the “Russian” ethnic group and was prescribed a fine of 100,000 roubles. He was put on Russia’s so-called “list of terrorists and extremists” held by Rosfinmonitoring (Federal Financial Monitoring Agency) and his bank card was blocked. After a series of unsuccessful attempts to withdraw money, he approached the Arkhangelsk branch of Sberbank, where on 23rd May 2013 he was told that the bank had the right to suspend or terminate the use of his card in the event of violation of their conditions of use. At the same time, during private conversations, the bank employees hinted at the fact that he was on the black list of Rosfinmonitoring and that this was the main problem. ![]() Ivan Moseev considered the bank's actions illegal and appealed to the October district court of Arkhangelsk. He told them he was the only breadwinner in a family of four people, two of whom were minors and that he needed the little money on his card for essential everyday needs, not for the financing of terrorism. Moseev asked them to pay attention to the fact that he was not accused of engaging in terrorist activity, but because of a comment on the internet, that he had never faced a criminal prosecution before and had not been convicted of violating anti-terrorism legislation. “The first three appeals to Rosfinmonitoring within the framework of this suit ended without meaningful formal replies of the department,” said lawyer Sergei Petryakov, representing the interests of Ivan Moseev. “It was only when the question about the need for a representative from Rosfinmonitoring to participate in the court hearing arose, that we received an answer from the department, saying that there had been no decision on the suspension of debit transactions imposed on Moseev’s bank account by Rosfinmonitoring. Thus, given that Rosfinmonitoring has stated it has no objections, we consider that in the case of the violation of the existing legislation, the bank actually took upon itself the responsibility of the supervisory authority for the approval or denial of carrying out operations”. |
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