The National Bank of Ukraine (NBU) has reported a decrease in the number of currency purchase and/or transfer transaction schemes..

The NBU said that the regulator in February rejected only 706 currency purchase transactions, compared to 2,800 rejections in November and 6,700 in December 2015.

The central bank on December 18, 2015 and January 29, 2016 sent letters to Ukrainian banks. The regulator said that banks are currency control agents and must monitor compliance with legislation on currency transfers.

"Banks by December formally had accumulated a list of currency control documents. They could report on suspect transactions to the financial monitoring services. But they included these transactions into the register and submitted it to the NBU. The regulator had to stop doubtful transactions, instead of banks. The letter campaign helped create legal grounds for changing the approach in general. We see good progress. Banks have started revealing and halting doubtful activities themselves," the press service of the regulator said, citing Director of the NBU's financial monitoring department Ihor Bereza.