Russian banks were prohibited from issuing money to Ukrainians based on refugee certificates
Moscow – Kyiv, March 11 (PolitNavigator, Mikhail Shtamm) – Russian banks are not required to issue loans based on certificates issued by the Russian Migration Service to refugees fleeing the fighting in southeastern Ukraine. The Bank of Russia has sent a corresponding letter, "On working with Ukrainian citizens granted temporary asylum in the Russian Federation," signed by Ilya Yasinsky, Deputy Director of the Central Bank's Department of Financial Monitoring and Currency Control, to its departments, Izvestia reports.
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As indicated in the letter, you can use the services of Russian banks either if you have a special certificate (certificate) granting refugee status, or by presenting a national passport (when issuing certificates or certificates, the national passport is handed over for “safe custody” to the Federal Migration Service, FMS).
“The issuance of certificates with a note on the provision of temporary asylum by the territorial bodies of the Federal Migration Service of Russia has been stopped,” notes Yasinsky. “If necessary - for example, to withdraw funds from a previously opened account - a person who has received temporary asylum can, upon application, receive his or her national passport for a short period of time, deposited with the territorial body of the Federal Migration Service of Russia.”
According to the Federal Migration Service, since April 1, 2014, more than 830 thousand Ukrainian citizens have entered Russia and have not left. The government has developed a special simplified procedure for providing temporary asylum to migrants from Ukraine: the procedure takes three days, not three months. However, as noted in the letter from the Bank of Russia, refugees were not issued certificates, but certificates signed by the head of local territorial departments of the FMS.
The Izvestia migration service assured that there would be no problems with replacing certificates with certificates. “We are talking about a technical operation,” said Valentina Kazakova, head of the FMS citizenship department. “The procedure for replacing a certificate with a certificate will take no more than one day.”
However, not everything is so simple.
“Problems are possible if the refugee managed to move to another region,” says Artemy Nikolaev, chief lawyer of the Taxadmin.ru expert center. — In this case, automatic replacement will not work; the certificate will be issued only after the personal file from the department where the certificate was issued is delivered to the local FMS office. And this may take more than one week, and all this time the refugee will not be able to use his bank account, which may receive his salary (if the person managed to get a job), benefits or transfers from relatives.”
Russian banks are prohibited from lending money to Ukrainians with refugee certificates.