Chairperson of Upper House Urges Russian MPs to Take Up Crypto Draft Bill Soon

By Prashant Jha

Valentina Matvienko, who serves as the chairperson of the upper house of the Russian Parliament has called upon all the parliamentarians to quickly discuss and work on the the bunch of pending bills relating to digital economy, including one that concerns crypto regulation. A local news media outlet has reported the official’s comments on 29th January, 2019.

As we had earlier reported, Russia has over 20 cryptocurrency bills that can be passed in this year in the pipeline and it is no wonder that Matvienko wants the members of the parliament to hurry up.

The current chair has a long and valuable experience of having headed the Federation Council for about 8 years now, since 2011. She has talked to many officials from a number of institutions, including crucial ones such as the Upper House Committee for Economic Policy and Russia’s Ministry of Digital Development, Communications and Mass Media. She has asked these officials to take up an investigation into why these bills have been delayed so much.

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Considering that all these digital economy bills are expected to regularise and boost the Russian economy effectively, it does seem quite strange that they have not been expedited yet.

As Matvienko pointed out, the bills in question have remained stuck for a whole year in the Russian Parliament’s lower house, Duma.

She came out quite strongly in criticism of this delay and requested all the members of the Parliament to find out what was causing this delay to begin with.

She also felt that the legislations in question were possibly poorly drafted and were in urgent need of being redrafted.

She also pointed out with considerable frustration that Russia’s enormous wealth of resources with regard to the data needed for a digital overhaul, were not being implemented properly.

This lack of implementation, in her opinion, seems to be solely arising from the delays within the legal framework. As a result, startups are having to find other jurisdictions.

Hopefully, the Russian parliament will soon take up these bills for consideration and meet the deadline of end-February set by Anatoly Aksakov, the person who heads the Committee on Financial Markets. Earlier in January, the Duma’s chairman Vyacheslav Volodin has also called for these bills to be expedited.