"Russian authorities are preparing for mass seizure of cryptocurrency"

Nexta, an Eastern European news agency is citing Interfax in a report that Russian authorities are preparing for mass seizure of cryptocurrency.

https://twitter.com/nexta_tv/status/1644744757577494528

The full text of the tweet is:

Russian authorities are preparing for mass seizure of cryptocurrency

Investigative agencies should be allowed to open cryptocurrency wallets or accounts to confiscate cryptocurrencies, said Madina Dolgiyeva, representative of the Main Criminal Procedural Department of the Prosecutor General's Office of Russia, Interfax reported.

According to her, it is not necessary to make changes to the law of criminal procedure - a government decree will be enough. However, amendments will be required to the law on enforcement proceedings, so that after the arrest the Federal Bailiff Service could sell the seized cryptocurrency.

At the end of January it became known that Rosfinmonitoring will allocate up to 340 million rubles to improve the system of tracking cryptocurrency transactions, including Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, Litecoin and Dogecoin. After the improvement, the agency plans to create a registry, in which the wallet address will be linked to its alleged owner.

Last April, Russian Prime Minister Mishustin said that crypto-assets of Russians exceeded 10 trillion rubles.

(10Tn RUB is about 123Bn USD.)

Exactly how they would go about enforcing this and actually seizing crypto is not clear.