MOSCOW, January 17 (RAPSI) – Russia’s State Duma has passed a governmental bill aimed to counter theft of money from bank accounts via telebanking in the first reading.

The document sets forth the procedure banks should follow when detecting signs of money being transferred without customers’ consent. In such cases, to prevent unauthorized transmissions, banks or other money transfer operators should be obliged to suspend suspicious transmissions for a term not exceeding two working days, as well as to block respective electronic payment facilities for the same time period. The signs of unauthorized transfers should be defined by Russia’s Central Bank.

At the same time, banks are to be granted an option to carry out the actions enumerated above when discovering additional signs of money transfers being made without customers’ consent, the said signs to be independently defined by banks in line with the guidelines provided by the Central Bank.

In the case a money transfer is suspended, and payment facility is blocked, the bank involved should immediately get in contact with the affected customer asking for the confirmation of the transfer and, if given, to immediately carry out the transmission. When failing to obtain such a confirmation, the bank should perform the operation after two working days.

According to the bill, the Central Bank should be empowered to create and run a database of cases, where unauthorized money transmissions were detected.

The bill, according to the State Duma Committee on financial markets, is aimed to prevent unauthorized withdrawal of money from bank accounts and to protect both individuals and legal entities.