The Supervisory Board of the Belarusian High-Tech Park (HTP) approved the regulations relating to the activities of its residents using “digital signs”. They are coordinated with the National Bank of Belarus and the Financial Action Task Force on Money Laundering (FATF) – and establish general regulations for HTP residents, frameworks for ICO organizers, requirements for cryptocurrency operators and cryptocurrency exchanges , as well as internal controls.
Thus, according to the package of documents, the authorized capital of ICO operators should be at least 500 thousand Belarusian rubles, and cryptoplatforms should not be less than 2 million Belarusian rubles.
At the same time operators kriptoplatform required to conduct customer identification under the AML / CFT requirements of the policy, to report on the balances on their accounts and are not admitted to trading of minors, citizens in jurisdictions where prohibited transactions with tokens , or those who may be related to money laundering , financing of terrorism or does not have sufficient competences to conduct transactions, as well as tokens created, placed or offered for placement with violations of the law.
For cryptocurrency companies, standards have been set that affect the topics of hiring employees, financial stability, information systems, security, etc. Residents of the HTP, which currently number 388, are required to be audited annually at the Big Four companies, and applicants for registration in As residents of the HTP, among others, they should use Elliptic, Chainalysis, Coinfirm, Neutrino, etc.
Residents of the HTP can conduct an ICO independently or through an HTP resident intermediary. And ICO customers – both Belarusian and foreign legal entities – should receive a whitepaper from them with a full description for potential investors who should be warned about the risks and not promise them in advertising easy ways of enrichment. At the same time, the text of advertisements in general must meet a number of additional requirements and be coordinated with the official responsible for compliance with the HTP regime.
Operators of currency exchange points are now officially required to receive the full name, date of birth and residential address of the client’s physical person or name, location, payer’s registration number or Tax ID number of the legal person’s client and other contact information – and exclude the possibility of registering several cabinets with one client in the system .
The operators of crypto sites and exchange offices must also immediately execute customer requests, back up data on their transactions every day, make audio or video recordings of negotiations with them and keep such records and correspondence for at least 5 years. In addition, they are obliged to familiarize employees and other involved individuals with the regulatory framework.
Recall that President of Belarus Alexander Lukashenko signed Decree No. 8 “On the Development of the Digital Economy” in December 2017. The document provides, among other things, the most favorable conditions for the development of blockchain technology (including mining and circulation of cryptocurrencies), as well as comprehensive legal regulation of activities in this area. And in March of this year, the country's finance ministry published a national cryptocurrency accounting standard.
