Russia's financial monitoring agency has put forward a proposal that would allow bank accounts to be frozen when a customer's details only partly match entries on the country's register of terrorists and extremists, meduza.io reports. The measure was published on Wednesday, according to the outlet.
Under the plan described by meduza.io, a full match would no longer be required before restrictions are applied. A partial resemblance between a person's information and an entry on the list could be enough to trigger a freeze.
The proposal concerns the list of individuals and entities designated by Russian authorities as terrorists or extremists. Banks in Russia are already expected to act against customers whose details correspond to that register. The reported change would widen the grounds for taking action, moving the threshold from exact identification toward looser, partial similarity.
meduza.io did not provide further details on how partial matches would be assessed, which data points would be compared, or what recourse account holders would have. The proposal's current status and the timeline for any decision were also not specified in the available reporting.
The register at the center of the proposal is maintained by Russian state bodies and is used to justify restrictions on banking services. Expanding freezes to partial matches would affect how financial institutions screen customers against the list, though the practical scope of the change remains unclear from the reporting so far.
What to watch next: whether Russian authorities formally adopt the measure, and how banks would be instructed to determine what counts as a partial match.
