by Mariya Andrianova
Russian state authorities maintain a very interesting approach towards cryptocurrencies and cryptoassets.
In one situation, they consider cryptocurrencies and cryptoassets as “miscellaneous property” with an obvious legal status and tend to include it into the taxable base and bankruptcy clauses. For example, it happened in the bankruptcy case of a Russian citizen named Igor Tsarkov (case No. A40–124668/2017). On the 2nd of February, 2018, the Moscow Arbitrary Court disclosed its position that cryptocurrency in a digital wallet of an insolvent individual shall be included into bankruptcy clauses and distributed among the creditors in bankruptcy proceedings.
Tsarkov’s defense insisted that cryptocurrency could not be taken into account when forming bankruptcy cases because of absence of regulation. Nevertheless, the court requested that Tsarkov provide access to his digital wallet and provide information on cryptoassets. The next hearing is scheduled on the 26th of February, 2018. There were some other bankruptcy cases during which Russian courts held their position that there was no reason as to why cryptocurrencies should be excluded from the bankruptcy clauses.
However, in another situation, the Russian Ministry of Labor took a different approach. It decided that government officials should not declare their income in cryptocurrency for the period of 2017, because the status of cryptocurrency is not properly defined and since there is no regulation.
DeHedge hopes that such discrepancies will be eliminated with the passing of new legislation in the summer of 2018 and this legislation will lead to equal, clear, transparent and predictable approaches to cryptocurrency related issues in Russia.
Before such legislation is passed, however, cryptocurrency market participants will have to act on assumption that absence of regulation might result in interpretation of a particular situation by enforcers in favor of the latter.
