Media: Russia’s Federal Taxation Service obtained Russian users’ data of the LocalBitcoins exchange

The Finnish cryptocurrency platform may have sent user information to the local tax office

07.04.2022 - 11:25

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What’s new? The Federal Taxation Service (FTS) may have obtained the data of more than 100 000 Russian users of the LocalBitcoins exchange for 2021, Blockchain24 reports. According to Andrey Tugarin, managing partner of GMT Legal, the cryptocurrency platform has long been sending information about all of its users to the Finnish tax office, which cooperates closely with Russia.

Blockchain24’s material

Why did this happen? Russia and Finland are parties to the Convention on Mutual Administrative Assistance in Tax Matters. Dmitry Stepanin, trader and founder of the Telegram channel about P2P trading, explained:

“Information about Russian users is not provided directly to any state bodies and services of the Russian Federation. However, the platform interacts with the Finnish police and the tax office, as it is the company registered in Finland.”

That is, the exchange itself did not transmit information about users to the FTS, but the Russian regulator had every right to request information from the Finnish government. Stepanin noted that any exchange or P2P platform registered in Europe or the US can interact with the tax authorities in this way.

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