EU bans seven Russian banks from SWIFT

EU bans seven Russian banks from SWIFT

• The European Union has banned seven Russian banks from the Society for World Wide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT) global system that underpins cross-border payments. But it spared two financial institutions in Russia because they are keys to transactions for EU energy imports.
• The EU left out Gazprombank and Sberbank to disconnect parts of the Russian financial industry from the SWIFT secure messaging network.
• The exemption of those two banks underscores the bloc’s reliance on Russian energy and the two financial institutions’ central role in managing payments for that business.
• The seven banks targeted by the latest EU sanctions against Russia over its invasion of Ukraine are: Bank Otkritie, Novikombank, Promsvyazbank, Rossiya Bank, Sovcombank, VEB and VTB.
• Gazprombank and Sberbank are, however, subject to other sets of EU financial sanctions against Russia that began in 2014 when the Kremlin annexed the Ukrainian region of Crimea.

Published date : 03 Mar 2022 06:04PM