The European Union published, on Wednesday (2), the rule for the expulsion of seven Russian banks from the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunications (Swift) as a result of the country’s invasion of Ukraine.
On the other hand, Sberbank, the largest Russian bank, and Gazprombank were not included in the list, because they process most of the energy transactions with the block.
The list of institutions to be kicked out of the system includes Bank Otkritie, Novikombank, Promsvyazbank, Bank Rossiya, Sovcombank, Vnesheconombank (VEB) and VTB, the latter being the second largest in the Russian financial system, according to the EU Official Gazette.
The Council of the European Union stated in a statement that the disconnection – combined with the G7 last weekend – will be effective in ten days and will also apply to any person, entity or body established in Russia and whose property rights are directly or indirectly more than 50% held by one of the entities involved.
In addition, the EU also prohibits in this sanctions package investments in future projects co-financed by the Russian Direct Investment Fund, as well as the sale, supply, transfer or export of euro-denominated banknotes to Russia, including the Russian government and the Central Bank. from Russia.
The EU decided to leave the main Russian bank, Sberbank, and Gazprombank out of the sanctioned list so as not to hamper European countries’ gas and oil purchase operations.
“We would like to disable specific transactions, but Swift doesn’t work that way. You can’t discriminate between different types of transactions, so we had to leave them off the list,” the sources said, noting that 25% of the Russian financial system will be affected. for the disconnection with Swift, and that’s not counting VEB, which is a development bank.
Based in Belgium, the Swift system connects around 11,000 financial institutions around the world and works as a platform for communicating financial transactions.
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