Russian State Duma promises not to take away overdue deposits

Russia's State Duma are studying a proposal to nationalize the deposits unrequested in due time, head of the financial market committee Anatoly Aksakov said, adding that this proposal is likely to be declined.

"The deputies are considering proposals to transfer unrequested deposits to the budget. This fate can also befall the money of nominal securities holders and those participants of joint-stock companies who are inactive and therefore do not receive dividends. The goal is to figure out things with these resources," Aksakov said, adding that the amount of such funds is estimated at billions of rubles.

The head of the financial market committee said that a few questions still remained here – whether to create a special fund to accumulate such money or not. "It is quite possible that we will have to accumulate all this at accounts and only then decide what is to be done with it," the official noted.

"There are the proposals, which are ready and calculated. We will deal with them seriously next year," PRIME cited Aksakov as saying.

The professor at the department of the stock market and investments at the Higher School of Economics, Alexander Abramov, speaking with Vestnik Kavkaza, noted that the initiative does not flow directly from the interests of banks, since maintaining overdue deposits is not a burden for financial organizations. "Indeed, when people die, it often happens that money in their accounts are not claimed by their heirs. But I doubt that there is a consolidated opinion of bankers on this issue, rather, it is a project of some interested parties who need such a fund. Maintaining these deposits is not a big problem for banks. Banks can talk through terms of deposit prolongation and use even unclaimed money," he said.

The head of the department of stock markets and financial engineering of the Faculty of Finance and the Banking Business of RANEPA, former deputy chairman of the Central Bank of Russia Konstantin Korischenko, in turn, stressed that banks still have to bear a number of expenses due to unclaimed deposits. "Although small, but operational costs in connection with such deposits still exist. It is possible that the banks have accumulated a significant amount of deposits in recent years that are not serviced, but which cannot be forcibly closed according to the law. I think such an initiative does not make much sense," he noted.