• Officials have now cleared both the financial and political topics that were up for discussion over the past weeks within the United States’ political and financial circles.
• Georgieva Kristalina, director of the IMF believes there has been no evidence that would support this belief.
• Janet Yellen is the US Treasury Secretary and believes it very difficult for Russia to evade Western sanctions.

Georgieva Kristalina is the managing director at the International Monetary Fund. She believes there are no solid evidence to support the widespread use of cryptocurrency by individuals, governments or companies in order to evade sanctions.

Janet Yellen (Secretary of Treasury) agreed that it was impossible to use digital money to bypass the West’s sanctions against Russia in order to prevent the invasion of Ukraine.

“There is no strong evidence that digital money can be used to circumvent sanctions. Why? Because the financial system still has an important role to play,” Georgieva said this week during a virtual conference between the IMF and the World Bank.
The director of the international credit organization specified that “The sanctions very clearly prevent the transactions.” However, she clarified that the IMF is closely following the case and is monitoring compliance with Western sanctions on Russia, since the war began on February 24.

Ukraine received assistance in cryptocurrency

She noted that the Ukrainian authorities “were very interested in digital currencies before the war. They did lots of work. This allowed them to receive help “at a low cost, quickly”, reaching the people who need it, added Georgieva.
But she stated that the US$100 million in cryptocurrency assistance was only a fraction of all contributions made by Western countries to help the country under attack.

In her remarks, Georgieva also mentioned that Russia is “moving towards a digital central bank currency” or CBDC. China, the European Union and the United States are all examples.

Flipside

• Recent weeks have seen a lot of talk about the alleged misuse of cryptocurrency to avoid sanctions.
• American politicians and analysts are wondering whether the Kremlin was able to circumvent Western sanctions using digital currency.

Janet Yellen (US Treasury Secretary) is skeptical. In March, she stated that it wasn’t that the sector was completely unregulated.

He noted, one month later, in a House Financial Services Committee hearing, that while “it’s a channel which we are worried about”, he said, “We haven’t yet seen significant evasion via crypto so far.”

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