My Lords, I raise again with the Government the issue of cryptocurrencies. Effectively, Russians cannot now transfer roubles into dollars, euros and pounds sterling but they can transfer into cryptocurrency. The Minister will know that the Ukrainian Minister of Finance on Monday called on all the decentralised finance—the DeFi exchanges—to remove Russia from their schemes. Some, such as Coinbase, have done so, but others—Binance is the big one that comes to mind—have decided to sanction only the 100 names on the sanctions list and otherwise to allow free translation of roubles into cryptocurrency. We have heard from the Ukrainian Government that this is a serious mechanism for evading sanctions. Binance, which I mentioned, is registered in the Cayman Islands and therefore falls into the UK financial family. What more will the Minister do to prevent what may have looked like a loophole from becoming what is now growing into—a major escape hole?
Russia (Sanctions) (EU Exit) (Amendment) (No. 2) Regulations 2022
Proceeding contribution from
Baroness Kramer
(Liberal Democrat)
in the House of Lords on Thursday, 3 March 2022.
It occurred during Debates on delegated legislation on Russia (Sanctions) (EU Exit) (Amendment) (No. 2) Regulations 2022.
Type
Proceeding contribution
Reference
819 c998 
Session
2021-22
Chamber / Committee
House of Lords chamber
Subjects
Librarians' tools
Timestamp
2022-03-04 14:17:39 +0000
URI
http://hansard.intranet.data.parliament.uk/Lords/2022-03-03/22030359000102
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