The Japanese government will review the Foreign Exchange Law to close backdoors for sanctions evasion

The Japanese government has stated that it will look for an opportunity to close any backdoors for sanctions evasion against the Russian Federation. On Monday, the Japanese government made a statement that the country’s currency legislation will be revised in order to prevent Russia’s attempts to evade Western sanctions restrictions with cryptocurrency assets. For this purpose, during the next meeting of the Japanese Parliament, the Kishida government will revise the Law on Foreign Exchange and Foreign Trade. This was reported to the Reuters news agency by Hirokazu Matsuno, chief secretary of the Cabinet of Ministers of Japan.

The framework of the amendments will be the ability to apply to exchanges with crypto assets the same measures as to banks and oblige them to check more carefully their clients for involvement in objects that are sanctioned. Here we are talking not only about pressure on Russia by the West, but also about its own restrictions, because with the beginning of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Japan imposed sanctions on the freezing of assets of more than a hundred officials from the Russian Federation. Also under attack were the money of Russian oligarchs and some banks. Japan also stopped the export of high technologies to Russia. The actions of the Japanese government did not end there, because since the beginning of March, the Japanese financial regulator demanded that 30 crypto exchanges stop operations with sanctioned assets. The Prime Minister of Japan, Fumio Kishida, also spoke in favor of changing the legislation. Kishida noted that it is necessary to coordinate actions with Western countries on this issue, especially after the G7 summit held in Belgium last week. In his opinion, only by acting together it is possible to reduce the probability of circumventing the sanctions imposed by the US and EU countries on Russia with the help of crypto assets. According to experts, these changes in Japanese legislation are caused by the examples of Western countries, such as the US and EU countries, where they are also concerned about too much “freedom” of cryptocurrency and the possibility of circumventing any sanctions with their help.