The “card to card” turnover in Azerbaijan is incredibly large.
elchi reports that this was stated by Taleh Kazimov, Chairman of the Central Bank of Azerbaijan (CBA), at a press conference held today.
“Sometimes, a person receives deposits from various cards into their account throughout the day, in amounts of 10, 50, 100, or 200 manats. When a bank analyzes this, it sometimes becomes suspicious and, in accordance with the law, sends information about the transactions to the Financial Monitoring Service. If the Service itself analyzes it and concludes that there is tax evasion, it informs the State Tax Service under the Ministry of Economy,” he noted.
According to him, government agencies want to obtain more information about individuals: “As the head of the regulatory body, I do not support this because it could reduce trust in the banking sector. But we can rightfully ask: why is a debit card being used for entrepreneurial activity? The law currently states that banks must provide bank information of those engaged in entrepreneurial activity to the State Tax Service once a month. However, if the card is not linked to a TIN (VÖEN), the process is completely different. If a person receives 50 ‘card-to-card’ deposits a day, this should raise suspicion.”
“Legislation currently protects personal data. But if someone is conducting suspicious transactions, these must be checked. Besides tax evasion, there could also be fraud or money laundering here. So what if it is personal data? I believe that you are receiving amounts from unknown sources. The Financial Monitoring Service is analyzing this.”