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August 24, 2018 www.intellinews.com I Page 5
The CBR was also said to have added more gold to its reserves in July than any other month this year, Bloomberg reported citing the data by the International Monetary Fund.
Reportedly the CBR bought 26.1 tonnes of gold, bringing its holdings to 2,170 tonnes valued at $77.4bn. Previous reports also showed that the CBR has slashed its holdings of US Treasury bills since spring 2018 to insulate its reserves from possible sanction fallout.
bne IntelliNews already reported that Russian ruble and government bonds are under pressure, with the yield on 10-year OFZ bonds rose to its highest level since December 2016 at last week's closing to 8.7%. The Russian Government Bond Index (RGBI) lost 4% from the beginning of August and 5% year-to-date to 134.16 points. The bonds of Russian state-controlled development bank Vnesheconombank (VEB) also suffered.
Separate reports on August 23 claimed that London branch of Deutsche Bank has asked the
Russian government to update the client account information under Know Your customer (KYC) practise.
This was confirmed by the Finance Ministry to Vedomosti daily, while other sources told the daily that the government officials were baffled by the request and assume that it could relate to Deutsche Bank acting as agent for deals with securities of state-controlled companies.
Reuters said on August 23 that Credit Suisse froze about CHF5bn ($5bn) of Russia-linked accounts to keep clear of US sanctions. About $6.2bn billion, or 14% of total Russian cross-border outflows went to Switzerland in 2017.
“Credit Suisse works with international regulators wherever it does business to ensure compliance with sanctions, including compliance with sanc- tions involving Russia,” said a spokeswoman for the bank, as cited by Reuters, without identifying the owners of the money.