The UK has today designated three Russian banks, as follows: VEB.RFBank Otkritie Financial Corporation PJSCPJSC Sovcombank UK persons are prohibited from providing funds or economic resources to the benefit of these banks and individuals. This includes transfers involving accounts held by non-sanctioned individuals at the designated banks. Additionally, dealings with entities owned or controlled by the newly designated parties will generally be considered as restricted by the sanctions. This follows the designation of all three…
On 26 February 2021, the European Commission, France, Germany, Italy, the UK, Canada and the US released a coordinated statement condemning the Russian invasion of Ukraine and committing to further restrictive measures, including: Ensuring that selected Russian banks are removed from the SWIFT messaging system, which facilitates global cross-border financial transfers. The affected banks have not yet been named.Imposing restrictive measures that will prevent the Russian Central Bank from deploying its international reserves in ways…
In light of the further escalation of the Russia-Ukraine conflict, the EU agreed on Friday, 25 February, on a second wave of sanctions targeting broad areas of the Russian economy and other high profile political and military leaders in Russia and Belarus. In brief, the new restrictions include: designations of Russian and Belarusian individuals;wide-ranging restrictions on trade in goods and associated services, including dual-use and various other items, and goods for the oil refining, aviation…
On 25 February, the UK Office for Financial Sanctions Implementation published a general licence permitting the wind-down of transactions involving VTB Bank, its UK subsidiary VTB Capital plc, and VTB Capital plc’s UK subsidiaries (collectively, “VTB”). This follows the UK’s designation of VTB Bank on 24 February (see our earlier post here). The licence permits any person (other than VTB) to wind down any transaction to which it is a party that involves VTB, including…