Russian banks complained of “spam attack” from bailiffs

The National Council of the Financial Market (NCFM) complained to the Bank of Russia and the Federal Bailiff Service (FSSP) about an unprecedented number of requests received by credit institutions from September 18 to 21. Kommersant writes about this.

It says that one of the regional banks received 12.8 million requests from bailiffs on September 19 alone, that is, the monthly norm.

Other banks claim that the number of inquiries has increased 10-48 times these days, with 90 percent of cases involving people who are not even their customers. In fact, financial organizations faced something like a spam attack because their systems were not designed to handle so many requests.

The law obliges banks to provide the requested information within three days from the date of receipt of the request, otherwise they will face a fine of 50 thousand to 100 thousand rubles for each unprocessed request. The head of the NSFR, Andrei Emelin, indicated that the total amount of fines for these three days could threaten the financial stability of organizations.

Director of the Banking Development Department of the Association of Banks of Russia (ADB), Elena Samokhina, emphasized that a significant increase in document flow without prior notice created a critical load on banks’ information systems and channels of electronic interaction with the FSSP.

Experts do not rule out that such mailings are related to technical problems. Chairman of the Board of Directors of Pervouralskbank Mikhail Bryukhanov recalled that the FSSP previously itself recognized the repeated sending of a request in the event that confirmation from the bank did not arrive or was lost.

However, the NSFR drew attention to the fact that the FSPP plans to send out requests on a regular basis. The tax service claims that the legislation does not limit the number of requests to identify the debtor’s property status, so there are no violations.

The banks are asking the Central Bank to point out to the FSPP that it is inadmissible to abuse the right to an endless number of requests, and also to demand the publication of an information letter removing financial organizations from liability for failure to comply with deadlines for requests sent on September 18-21.

According to Samokhina, ADB also sent proposals to bailiffs to optimize electronic document flow in order to prevent a sudden concentration of requests for banks in a short amount of time.