Financial institutions primarily suspended services to corporate customers of “Russian origin”.
Turkish banks refuse to work with Russian citizens because they fear secondary sanctions. This was reported by Vedomosti.
First of all, they are cutting off relations with customers after the start of the large-scale invasion of Russian troops into Ukrainian territory in 2022. As financial advisor Iskander Mirgalimov noted, banks suspended services to corporate clients of “Russian origin”. According to him, this applies to oil and gas traders and people using Turkey as a transit jurisdiction for supplies and certain payments.
Important
“Companies are actually starting to be advised to complete their transactions with the bank and close their accounts,” he said.
Vedomosti’s interlocutors said that Turkish state banks still make separate payments for goods on the so-called “green list”. This applies to food, textiles and pharmaceutical products and payments are only possible in national currencies.
Previously, an interlocutor of Kommersant newspaper said that their correspondent relationship was terminated. This also applies to processing payments without formally closing contracts. “There are exceptions, for example, regarding Russian subsidiaries of foreign banks,” one of the sources said.
In the summer of 2023, the situation for Russian banks worsened even further. The situation of the Russians worsened when US President Joe Biden issued a decree on secondary sanctions in December. As a result, it was possible to influence Turkish banks, which cut correspondent relations with almost all Russian credit institutions.
Let us recall that on January 25, the Associated Press reported that, based on statistics from local financial authorities, the Russian Federation lost the largest offshore company in Europe, while Cypriot banks closed more than 100 thousand accounts. Overall, Cypriot banks closed the accounts of 82% of customers in the Russian Federation from 2014 to 2022.
Source: Focus
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