Yerevan, January 22 /Mediamax/. Armenia and Russia signed today an interdepartmental agreement on cooperation in the sphere of prevention of money laundering and terror financing.

Mediamax reports that the agreement was signed in Yerevan today by the Head of the Federal Financial Monitoring Service of Russia (“Rosfinmonitoring”) Oleg Markov and the Head of the Center of Financial Monitoring of the Central Bank of Armenia Daniel Azatian.

Oleg Markov informed that the agreement is based on the principles of the International “Egmont” Group, members of which are 20 countries, including Armenia and Russia. The agreement provides for the exchange of information between the subdivisions of the financial intelligences of the two countries on suspicious operations with financial means, or other property.

He noted that the agreement will allow increasing the efficiency of the control system over transborder money flows, aiming at revealing and combating cases of money laundering.

As the Chairman of the Central Bank of Armenia Tigran Sarkisian stated, this is the first official agreement, signed by the Center of Financial Monitoring of the CB, noting that “financial and economic relations with Russia have prior importance for the economy of Armenia”.

Tigran Sarkisian expressed hope that the agreement will assist not only the information exchange between the Financial Intelligences of the two countries, but will also allow the Armenia side getting familiar to the rich experience, gained by the Russian colleagues by means of the educational center of Rosfinmonitoring.

“A draft law on combating financing of terror is today in the process of consideration in the Armenian parliament, and I consider very important the proposal of the Russian side on undergoing training in the educational center of Rosfinmonitoring not only for our employees, but also deputies and representatives of other departments”, Tigran Sarkisian stated.