Russian companies are facing payment delays of up to several months when receiving payment for oil and petroleum products as banks in China, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) have become more cautious, fearing secondary US sanctions, Reuters reported, citing eight people familiar with the matter.
According to the agency's interlocutors in the banking and trade spheres, a new wave of problems has arisen for oil companies in the past few weeks: banks in countries that the Kremlin calls "friendly" have increased requirements to comply with sanctions. This has led to delays or even refusals in translations to the Russian Federation, Reuters sources complain.
In particular, banks ask their customers to provide written assurances that no individual or legal entity from the United States SDN (Special Designated Nationals) list is participating in the transaction or is the beneficiary of the payment.
In the UAE, First Abu Dhabi Bank (FAB) and Dubai Islamic Bank (DIB) blocked several accounts linked to trade in Russian goods, two sources told Reuters.
The UAE's Mashreq Bank, Turkey's Ziraat and Vakifbank, as well as China's ICBC and Bank of China are still processing payments to Russian companies, but the delays have increased to weeks and in some cases months, according to four agency sources.
Despite the wave of sanctions, the number of which Russia surpassed Iran and North Korea, last year the economy received about 400 million euros per day from the sale of oil and its refined products abroad.
But "problems returned in December after banks and companies realized the threat of secondary US sanctions was real," a trade source told Reuters: the banks' stupor was triggered by a US Treasury decree issued on December 22, 2023, which warned of sanctions for violation of the price ceiling for foreign banks and a call to them to strengthen control over requirements.
In fact, the White House has warned bankers that Russia is on par with Iran and North Korea. "It became difficult, and not even for dollar transactions. "Sometimes it takes weeks to conduct a direct yuan-ruble transaction," said one of the traders. According to another agency source, banks in the UAE began receiving requests from the United States in February: they were required to provide information to American correspondent banks during transfers to China on behalf of a Russian organization.
Chinese banks generally send money back if they do not receive additional documents, including not only confirmation of the cargo, but also information on all founders of the parties to the contract.
In 2023, export receipts to Russia fell by 28%, and the final amount of export revenue — $425.1 billion — became the lowest since the 2020 pandemic. Relative to the first year of the war, it fell by $167.4 billion.
We will remind you that the other day, the largest mining and metallurgical holding of Russia, Nornickel, announced the mass refusal of foreign banks to make payments.
This was announced on Friday, March 29 by Anton Berlin, the vice-president of Russia's largest mining and metallurgical holding, which is the world leader in the production of nickel and palladium.
"We have quite a few banks that refuse to accept and transfer money to pay for Russian products. Practically all the largest banks refuse to transfer money to Russia," said Berlin on a direct line with Nornickel employees. He added that service providers, warehouses, ports, and ship owners also refuse to cooperate. "We have to rebuild the entire sales system ... Now we are facing a lot of external restrictions," Reuters quoted a top manager as saying.
According to the results of last year, Nornickel reported a two-fold drop in net profit, to $2.87 billion, as well as a reduction in the production of key metals: nickel - by 5%, to 209 thousand tons, and palladium - by 4%, to 2.692 million ounces .
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