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Putin marks decline in volume of funds channeled out of Russia via offshore networks

The president made this remark during a meeting with the head of the Federal Financial Monitoring Service

MOSCOW, March 11. /TASS/. President Vladimir Putin has marked a twofold decline in volume of funds, which were channeled out of Russia via offshore networks in comparison with 2016.

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He made this remark during a meeting with Yury Chikhanchin, head of the Federal Financial Monitoring Service [Rosfinmonitoring], on Monday.

At the meeting with the head of state, Chikhanchin noted that in the channeling of funds to offshore accounts was mainly due to tax evasion.

"But the decline (in volume of withdrawn funds - TASS) is very significant," the head of the regulator emphasized.

"Yes, it is twofold [as compared to] 2016," Putin said.

According to the notes of the meeting published on the Kremlin’s website, the president and the head of the regulator did not discuss the situation around Troika Dialog, the investment company, which was recently mentioned in a journalistic investigation on channeling money out of Russia through its offshore network.

Earlier Monday, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters that that journalistic investigation contains, among other things, distorted and incorrect data.

"There are a lot of facts there that have been known for a long time. They were mentioned, something is not true, something was mentioned incorrectly, with distortions, therefore there is no particular novelty in this investigation," the Kremlin spokesman said.

Earlier, several media outlets, including RBC, published data from the journalistic investigation project of the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP), according to which investment company Troika Dialog, run by Ruben Vardanyan, created a network of offshore companies through which money was channeled out of Russia, including the use criminal schemes.

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