Page 97 - RusRPTFeb23

bank card operator in Russia.
Clients of the Russian online bank Tinkoff have started noticing delays in transferring money to accounts in Georgia, which the bank says is being caused by financial institutions at the receiving end of the transfers, reports RBK. “All sent transfers will be executed. We are monitoring the situation and expect it to be resolved in the very near future,” Tinkoff said in a statement. Just days ago, popular Russian-language channels on the messenger app Telegram, such as MarketOverview, reported problems with money transfers to Georgia. As the authors of the channel wrote, Tinkoff clients said that money they sent was unable to reach accounts at the Bank of Georgia. In October of last year, Tinkoff removed the option of currency SWIFT transfers to Georgian banks. Now, according to information on the bank's website, dollars or euros can be transferred via SWIFT to Georgia, as well as China, Mongolia, Azerbaijan, Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. Incoming SWIFT transfers are possible from some CIS countries. Unlike many other Russian financial institutions, Tinkoff bank is not sanctioned by the West. In April, the bank's founder, Oleg Tinkov, sold the bank to oligarch Vladimir Potanin. As of March 2022, Tinkoff Bank has had its credit rating withdrawn in compliance with sanctions imposed as a result of Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
Dozens of banks from “unfriendly” countries remain unable to exit the Russian market due to the special decree of Vladimir Putin prohibiting any such deals without a special approval by authorities, The Bell wrote citing a Financial Times list of 45 such banks.
The largest such "trapped" banks in terms of assets are Raiffeisen, Italy's UniCredit and Citi.
Reportedly, negotiations on pulling out of Russia are stifled and the exiting banks fear that their subsidiaries would be taken over at bargain prices by "powerful Russians with close ties to the Kremlin".
The only bank that managed to quickly pull out of Russia was French Societe Generale, which sold its fully-owned Rosbank to oligarch Vladimir Potanin. Potanin remained unsanctioned for four months following Russia's invasion of Ukraine, and was quick to use the cash available to buy cheap discounted assets at home, and to rebuild his banking business empire.
The Rosbank deal pushed Potanin to the top of the Forbes list of Russian oligarchs that banked the most on dumped Western assets.
Even though Societe Generale had to write off €3.3bn on the exit, "with a quick and orderly disposal, even our competitors congratulated us," a SocGen manager told the Financial Times.
97 RUSSIA Country Report February 2023 www.intellinews.com