Russia’s financial watchdog proposes freezing bank accounts over partial matches with ‘terrorists and extremists’ list

Russia’s Federal Financial Monitoring Service, known as Rosfinmonitoring, is proposing to expand the grounds for freezing bank accounts. Under the proposed amendments, banks would be able to halt transactions when a client’s data only partially matches the data of a person whose funds are subject to a freeze.

The amendments to Russia’s law on combating the legalization of criminally obtained income were published on the government’s portal for draft regulations. The outlet Frank Media drew attention to the document.

Banks currently must freeze the accounts of people on Rosfinmonitoring’s list of terrorists and extremists within 24 hours. The list includes more than 15,000 people, including Telegram founder Pavel Durov, writer Boris Akunin, and political scientist Ekaterina Schulmann.

If the amendments pass, banks would halt transactions for five business days when a partial match occurs. The freeze would be lifted unless a separate decision extends it during that period. Rosfinmonitoring itself would set the exact criteria for what counts as a match.

As of February 1, 2026, more than 800 people on Rosfinmonitoring’s list had multiple recorded variants of their name, surname, or other identifying information, according to the document. The amendments are meant to close the loophole that allows people to evade the restrictions.