They will also exclude several Russian entities from SWIFT, the international system that secures financial transfers
The President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, will today bring to the meeting of EU Foreign Ministers the toughest battery of economic sanctions against Russia since the invasion of Ukraine began, a package of measures that has already been agreed with the United States. Von der Leyen, as announced last night by her and US President Joe Biden, will propose paralyzing the international assets of the Central Bank of Russia and suspending several Russian banks from SWIFT, the financial mechanism that allows secure money transfers in the international arena. . The new battery of sanctions has been agreed with the consensus of Germany, France, Italy, Canada and the United Kingdom.
The Central Bank of Russia stores a large part of the 570,000 million euros in gold and currency reserves of the Government of Vladimir Putin, so the decision of the EU and the US constitutes, if confirmed this Sunday, a great blow to their plans aid to banks and the foreign exchange market after the invasion of Ukraine. As for the entities that will be excluded from SWIFT, they are, according to the German Government, those that have already received other sanctions this week: Sberbank, VTB, Bank Otkritie, Sovcombank OJSC and Novikombank, although others could be added.
To these two measures are added others against “the deployment of the international reserves of the Central Bank of Russia”, as well as the prohibition of “Russian oligarchs” from carrying out operations in Western markets. In addition, a transatlantic task force will be launched next week “to ensure the effective implementation of our financial sanctions” by “identifying and freezing the assets of sanctioned individuals and companies” in the respective jurisdictions.