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A delegation from the United States Federal Reserve, FBI, and Justice Department discussed cracking down on Russia’s financial crimes at a recent seminar in Vladivostok.

When commercial banks formed in Russia, lawmakers did not develop legal codes to safeguard against financial crimes, officials said in the event from Sept. 30 to Oct. 3. As financial institutions expanded their operations beyond Russia’s borders, money laundering opportunities increased, but new laws preventing criminal activity were either full of loopholes, or left unwritten.

Russian bank officials believe that their problems lie not only within the Russian legal code, but in the country’s sustained isolation from developing international markets. Though foreign markets are now open to Russian banks, officials are untrained to recognize the criminal activity of global finances.

“Our banks are more developed now in international transactions,” said Victor Varlamov, Deputy General Director of International Banking at Dalrybbank. “But in many cases, bank employees are not trained to deal with the crime associated with that.”

As a result, officials hope to accomplish two things — gain experience from international banks to recognize criminal activity that the law cannot stop, and pressure their own government to develop a legal code within the country that prevents criminals, both Russian and international, from exploiting the Russian banking system.

The seminar targeted both of these areas. Banking officials from the Russian Central Bank attended the seminar, as did other high level officials in the banking industry beyond Vladivostok and the krai. Participants hope that these officials will apply insight from the seminar directly to the banking structure, and will pressure law-makers to change legislation, said Tatyana Rozanova, President of the Association of Far Eastern Banks.

American officials also said they would encourage Russian law-makers to help develop Russia’s banking system.

“Certainly from all of this it could be construed that we would like to see more of an effort done to get these laws and regulations in place,” said Daniel Soto, senior special examiner with the U.S. Federal Reserve.

“We have and will continue to assist from a US perspective.”

In addition, Russia hopes to become a member of the Financial Action Task Force, developed in 1989 to counteract financial laundering internationally, said Krai Presidential Representative and local FSB head Victor Kondratov.

“In our opinion, even the effective measures imposed on the legal code will be of no use without interaction from such structures,” he said.

Varlamov echoed these concerns.

“It’s extremely important for me to understand the American banker mentality, their style of thinking,” he said. “[Money laundering] is not a pure Russian problem – bankers in the United States have the same attitude toward it as we do.”