Administrative and legal status of the Bank of Russia

The paper employs historical, political and comparative legal methodology to analyze the peculiarities of the administrative and legal status of the Bank of Russia. It is possible to testify about the creation of an internally organized banking system connecting monetary and financial principles in the state only when, along with credit institutions, central banks appear with their own national characteristics. The powers of creditors of last resort in the framework of control and supervisory activities and their interaction with public authorities may vary in different countries, but the need to combine direct administration, economic instruments of monetary policy and elements of private law in a legal context can be unequivocally traced. Having historically developed monopoly on money issuance, like all other major banks of the first level, the Bank of Russia operates as an institution protecting and ensuring the stability of the national currency, gravitating being authorized by the state power. The chronology of the Bank’s administrative and legal status involves the search for consensus between the position of a mega-regulator of the financial market and the authority on its own behalf to carry out banking operations and transactions. Since imperial times, with its task of strengthening monetary relations, being a governing body of the banking system, the Bank of Russia as a subject of private law relationships seems to be a unique legal entity that makes expenses at the expense of its own income and does not pursue the goal of making a profit. The Bank of Russia owns, uses and manages its property that is referred to as federal property. The author sums up that the history of the development of national banks in the countries of the world, albeit ranked among various legal families, demonstrates the vesting of individual corporations with public powers within the framework of public administration. In order to achieve consensus in society, the administrative position of issue banks gives rise to the category of legal entities of public law.

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