The Ministry of Finance of the Russian Federation plans to force cryptocurrency miners to report their income to the tax authorities. For refusal, terms of up to four years in prison can be provided, writes Baza, which familiarized itself with the bill.

Amendments to the Criminal Code were proposed by Deputy Minister Aleksey Moiseev. Miners will have to file their tax returns, in which they will have to indicate the address-identifiers of their crypto wallets.

If a miner several times evades declaring income in excess of 15 million rubles over the course of three years, he faces up to two years in prison. If the amount is more than 45 million, then the punishment is toughened up to four years in prison.

The Ministry of Finance also wants to criminalize “illegal organization of the circulation of digital currencies.” The agency plans to create its own register of exchangers. Those not included in the list will be considered illegal. For the transfer of cryptocurrency through such exchangers, the authorities threaten up to 7 years in prison.

In March, representatives of the Russian Association of the Crypto-Industry and Blockchain wrote an open letter to Vladimir Putin warning that the Russian Federation could fall behind all other countries if the authorities continue to pursue a tough policy of regulating digital assets.

At the beginning of 2022, the Bank of Russia launched a public discussion of a complete ban on operations with cryptocurrencies, including trading and mining. And in December 2022, the Central Bank announced that cryptocurrencies mined in Russia should be sold only to non-residents on foreign exchanges. However, the Ministry of Finance did not support this proposal then. The Bank of Russia fears that cryptocurrencies and stablecoins are being introduced too quickly, and this could be risky for the monetary system.

In February 2023, Anatoly Aksakov, head of the State Duma Committee on the Financial Market, said that the authorities were discussing the need for mandatory verification of users, effectively equating legal crypto exchanges with banks.

Recently, a Russian was sentenced to two years probation for “conspiracy with an unknown attacker,” to whom the defendant sold a ruble code on the Garantex cryptocurrency exchange.