Bank of Russia Outlines New Surveillance, Fast Transfers and Manipulation Crackdown

Russia’s Central Bank Draws a Line Under Telegram ‘Finfluencer’ Manipulation

The Bank of Russia has lifted the lid on its three-year investigation that led to the arrest of three owners of popular Telegram investment channels, describing how it tracked their calls for subscribers to buy shares and then found the influencers themselves trading against those tips before publishing them. The regulator’s head of financial market infrastructure, Kirill …, said the probe involved analysing tens of thousands of transactions manually because not all could be screened automatically, and that the illegal income exceeded the 3.75 million rouble criminal threshold.

In a wide-ranging interview, the official also detailed new oversight tools, a fast-track securities transfer service that goes live on 1 September, and the evolution of Russia’s insider-trading legislation. He made clear that the central bank is not conducting a witch-hunt, but that any correlation between anomalous trading and Telegram-channel recommendations now triggers a near-automatic review, with algorithms spotting patterns such as large purchases followed by good news and quick profit-taking.

At the same time, the regulator is pushing to make non-trade transfers of securities between depositories far simpler – a frequent source of unintentional market manipulation when investors use coordinated orders in the anonymous order book solely to move assets between accounts. The new service will let individuals transfer securities to themselves much faster and, eventually, almost instantly.

Why Market Manipulation Cases Can Drag on for Years – and What the Regulator Is Changing

The Anatomy of a Three-Year Investigation

The case against the Telegram channels ‘Rynki Dengi Vlast,’ ‘Volk s Mosbirzhi’ and ‘Signaly RCB’ illustrates how painstaking manipulation probes can become. While the central bank can quickly detect unusual trading patterns, proving a criminal offence requires dissecting each transaction, calculating exact income and interviewing numerous participants. Here, tens of thousands of operations had to be analysed because many could not be screened automatically, and the regulator needed an airtight evidence base before handing the file to the Investigative Committee. The official noted that the central bank cannot settle criminal cases out of court, so cooperation agreements were not an option.

Influencer Surveillance Without a Register

The central bank already monitors all trades and a wide range of financial Telegram channels automatically, looking for correlations between unusual market activity and published calls to buy or sell. Any time a large purchase precedes good news and a quick profit-taking, the system flags it as a likely incidence of insider trading or front-running. While a formal register of influencers is under discussion, no configuration has been approved yet. In the meantime, the regulator says it concentrates its supervisory risk-based approach only on those who give it reasons, not on the sector as a whole. A tip-off service launched this year has already brought in over 150 reports, though the current flow is two to three quality submissions per week.

Brokers Becoming the Front Line

Professional market participants are already required to maintain their own compliance systems and to report non-standard client trades. An improvement introduced in 2024 lets brokers receive information from the exchange about significant deviations and then question clients on the reasons for suspicious transactions, producing better-quality material for the regulator. The central bank now receives 20–25 such notifications per month, and the quality is rising. This shifts part of the monitoring burden onto brokerage firms, which are expected to build robust internal controls or face inspections, mandatory orders and administrative liability.

Why Violations Have Soared

The number of detected manipulation cases jumped from dozens per year before 2024 to over 200 in 2025. Three drivers are cited: a surge in retail investors, many of whom do not understand the insider-trading law; weak compliance at some market firms; and derisory fines – just 3,000–5,000 roubles for individuals and 700,000 roubles for legal entities, vastly outweighed by the potential profit. The central bank is pushing to introduce proportionate economic penalties.

The Reform of Insider-Trading Rules

A bill currently in the State Duma will give issuers the choice of whether the CEO or the supervisory board approves the list of insider information, a compromise after some companies resisted shifting that power entirely to the board. The same bill obliges firms to publish anonymised aggregate data on insiders’ dealings. The regulator sees no contradiction even when a company has few insiders, arguing that most listed firms are large and have sizeable insider registers, so anonymisation remains meaningful. Mandatory insider-dealing disclosure is intended to reinforce market integrity.

What Investors, Brokers and Issuers Should Do to Stay Ahead of the Regulatory Shift

• Brokers and investment firms should review their automated surveillance systems now, because the central bank expects qualitative reports on non-standard transactions and will test compliance at on-site inspections. Firms that fail to meet the standard face mandatory orders and administrative penalties.
• Listed companies need to update their insider-handling procedures in light of the upcoming law: decide in advance whether the CEO or the board will approve the insider list, document that decision in the charter, and prepare to generate anonymised trading summaries for public disclosure once the requirement takes effect.
• Retail investors should be aware that following Telegram tips can have criminal consequences. If the tipster trades against the advice, both the influencer and the followers who execute the trades could be caught by the central bank’s transaction-monitoring algorithms – and fines are no longer the only risk.
• Anyone who currently uses coordinated exchange-based orders to move securities between related accounts should switch to the new fast-track non-trade transfer service from 1 September, which will initially handle “me-to-me” transfers for individuals. Continuing to use the anonymous order book to bypass outdated paperwork exposes both parties to manipulation charges, even if the intent is simply to consolidate holdings.