Armenian president signs law on fight against financing of terrorism

Arminfo
12 Jan 05

YEREVAN

Armenian President Robert Kocharyan signed a law on the fight against
money laundering and financing of terrorism on 11 January, the
presidential press service told Arminfo news agency today.

We should recall that this document envisages a simplified regime for
deals with private individuals working outside Armenia if the volume
of the deal exceeds 5m drams (about 10,000 US dollars). The limit for
foreigners to buy real estate, which is not subject to control, is
fixed at 50m drams (about 100,000 dollars). The document requires a
report about the origin of the sum if larger sums are used in a
deal. Moreover, the law also contains a provision that the bank
deposits opened by Armenian citizens in the republic’s banking system
before 1 July 2005 will not be regarded as doubtful deals.

The law envisages the establishment of a single financial monitoring
centre under the Central Bank, which will collect information from all
the financial sectors and analyse financial flows in order to reveal
dangerous phenomena and the extent to which deals are doubtful. For
the first time in the country’s legislation, this document clarifies
concepts like “financing of terrorism” and “doubtful deals” and offers
real mechanisms to fight them.

At the same time, the law establishes principles of collecting
information whose special feature is to clarify demands to financial
flows from offshore countries.

We should point out that in December 2004, the chairman of the Central
Bank of Armenia, Tigran Sarkisyan, pointed out that no cases of money
laundering or financing of terrorism have been registered in the
Armenian banking system, but there are doubtful deals investigated by
the Prosecutor-General’s Office.