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Raiffeisen Bank International AG and UniCredit SpA may lose the opportunity to sell their subsidiaries in Russia, Bloomberg reported.
According to sources, in the current circumstances, the authorities only allow the sale of bank assets to companies without the risk of sanctions, which completely rules out Russian buyers. At the same time, due to the opposition of Western countries to sales to non-Russian buyers, the deal has become virtually impossible.
Therefore, an agreement with these banks that is suitable for Russia will not be supported by Western countries, and Moscow will not support a solution that is suitable for Western countries. The position of the authorities is explained by the fact that the sanctions will not allow subsidiaries of Austrian and Italian banks to pay for gas exports, so the funds will have to be processed exclusively through Gazprombank. As the publication reminds, other large Russian banks have also been excluded from the SWIFT payment message system.
In March 2024, the US authorities threatened to impose sanctions on Raiffeisen for doing business in Russia. Washington believes that the bank finances the Russian army by operating in the Russian Federation.
"Last March, Delovoy Peterburg responded that Raiffeisen Bank International (RBI) had decided the fate of its operations in Russia. The company's CEO, Johann Strobl, plans to sell it or expand it outside the group. , announced plans to leave the Russian market by the end of 2023, rather than in October as planned.
In July last year, UniCredit appeared before the EU court in connection with the European Central Bank’s (ECB) statement on the risks of doing business in Russia. In this way, the financial institutions plan to achieve clarity regarding their obligations. The bank explained that it decided to go to court due to “unprecedented circumstances and the complexity of the socio-economic and geopolitical context.”