By Andrey Ostroukh
MOSCOW--Russia's banks would be interested in doing business in
the Crimea region but are afraid of possible sanctions, the central
bank's first deputy chairman Alexei Simanovsky said Friday,
state-run RIA agency reported.
Earlier this week, Russia's top lenders said they aren't
planning to do business in Crimea in what seemed to be a move to
shield themselves from possible penalties from the West.
OAO Sberbank, Russia's top lender, said it is represented on the
Crimea peninsula solely by its Ukraine's subsidiary AO Sberbank
Rossiya (SBER.MZ), registered in 2011. Russia' No.2 lender VTB
(VTBR.MZ) said that it hasn't opened branches in Sevastopol or
elsewhere in Crimea, and the Russian part of VTB Group is not
planning any activity there. The bank's subsidiary, VTB Ukraine,
obtained a license in 2005 and its offices are widely presented in
Crimea.
Several Russian lenders have already suffered from problems with
international payment systems Visa Inc. (V) and MasterCard Inc.(MA)
after the U.S had placed sanctions on Bank Rossiya, described by
the U.S. Treasury Department as a personal bank for senior Russian
officials.
Banks in the breakaway Crimea region will have to comply with
the Bank of Russia requirements as otherwise they will be shut
down, the Bank of Russia first deputy chairman Mikhail Sukhov said
late last month.
The breakaway region has two lenders with headquarters in
Crimea--Morskoi Bank and Black Sea Bank Of Reconstruction and
Development. Other banks in Crimea are mostly branches of Ukrainian
and Russian lenders.
Ukrainian banks in Crimea will have to match Bank of Russia
standards and allow the regulator to check their balance sheets. In
Russia, the central bank has shut down nearly four dozen banks
since the beginning of 2013, citing low quality of assets and
dubious operations. The purge intensified after Elvira Nabiullina
took over the chairmanship of the central bank in June.
-Write to andrey.ostroukh@wsj.com
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