In 2022, customs officers stopped 11,670 attempts to illegally move Russian rubles and foreign currency across the border. This is 24% more than a year earlier, the Federal Customs Service (FTS) reported. According to her, attempts to illegally export money were made four times more often than import.
The FCS said that the customs authorities initiated 103 cases under Art. 200.1 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (cash smuggling) and 11,567 cases of administrative offenses (failure to declare or false declaration of cash). The volume of illegally transferred funds in these cases in ruble terms amounted to 2.1 billion, which is 30% less than in 2021.
The main currency moved was the Russian ruble, which accounted for 45% of such cases, as well as dollars and euros. Most often, money was illegally exported to Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan, and Israel. They imported money, as a rule, from Turkey, Tajikistan, the United Arab Emirates and Azerbaijan.
In March 2022, as part of sanctions, the European Union and the United States banned the import of euro and dollar banknotes into Russia. In addition, from March 2 of the same year, it is forbidden to export currency over $10,000 from Russia. When entering the Russian Federation with an amount of more than $10,000, it must be declared. According to the statistics of the Central Bank, as of December 1, 2022, the volume of cash in circulation in Russia amounted to approximately 15.6 trillion rubles.
