Sanctioned Russian banks cannot use Chinese UnionPay.
The United States has introduced a new package of sanctions against representatives of the Russian financial sector. The list of Russians included the first deputy chairman of the Central Bank, Ksenia Yudaeva, and the head of Otkritie Bank, Mikhail Zadornov. In total, 29 individuals and 40 organizations are covered by sanctions.
As reported on the website of the US Treasury, referred to by RBC, the list includes representatives of the Central Bank, Deputy Head Mikhail Alekseeva, adviser Alexey Simanovsky.
Among the top managers “Otkritie ”, who were affected by the sanctions of the deputy head of the bank Nadezhda Cherkasova, members of the Supervisory Board Paul Goldfinch and Anatoly Karachinsky, Board member Irina Kremleva, Deputy Chairmen Dmitry Levin, Viktor Nikolaev, Tatiana Nesterenko, member of the Supervisory Board Andrey Golikov.
Also among the sanctioned persons were: the head of the “Special Investment Service ” Evgeny Galdetsky and Deputy head of the Ministry of Finance Vladimir Kolychev and the son of businessman Konstantin Malofeev Kirill Malofeev.
Among the organizations sanctioned were the structures of TC “Tsargrad” and PJSC “Transcapitalbank” — this is the operator of the new Hello payment system presented by the Central Bank, which was registered by the Central Bank.
The US Treasury has charged “Transcapitalbank” with an attempt to circumvent international sanctions.
The agency explained that the bank offered a number of Chinese and Middle Eastern banks the option of bypassing transactions through its own TKB Business system — an analogue of SWIFT. Among the transactions that were proposed to be carried out – servicing dollar payments of clients from the sanctions list.
The publication also clarifies that the sanctioned banks will not be able to issue cards of the Chinese UnionPay. RBC clarifies that representatives of the latter do not risk entering into cooperation because of the chance of secondary sanctions on the system.
The sources of the publication in large banks stated that UnionPay will not be issued by Sberbank, Opening, Alfa-Bank and VTB, and Promsvyazbank stopped issuing cards after the sanctions were imposed.
As Topnews wrote earlier, foreign online stores, together with acquiring banks, are blocking payments from cards issued in Russia, including Union Pay.
However, there was no official confirmation by the Chinese side of such a financial policy. As the sources clarified, the project was simply put on pause for no reason.