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Reuters: ECB has whitelist of Russian clients
European regulators do not require blocking payments, according to court documents filed by Italian bank UniCredit. However, it is not known who is on this list.
Italian bank UniCredit said the European Central Bank has a whitelist of Russian clients. The restrictions do not apply to items on that list. The existence of certain whitelists was revealed in court documents in a legal battle between UniCredit and European regulators, Reuters reports. Italian banks have been challenging the ECB's demands for the past four months.
Last April, he ordered UniCredit to wind down its operations in Russia, including banning new deposits and limiting repayments, and the bank responded by asking the EU court to overturn those demands. Sergey Glandin, a lawyer and partner at BGP Litigation, discusses which Russian entities could be included on the EU whitelist.
UniCredit is now the second-largest Western bank in Russia. Since 2022, it has wanted to sell its business here. Bidders came from Russia, Turkey, India and China, but the bank's executives later said they had been unable to find a suitable buyer.
UniCredit CEO Andrea Orcel said in an interview with the Financial Times that the bank is unlikely to leave the Russian market. The bank has now reduced its activity, but does not want to part with assets at low prices, the director said.