Page 21 - bne Magazine August 2022

bne August 2022 Companies & Markets I 21
The problems first arose when Belarus was due to make its last interest payment in February, for which the entire payment was made in US dollars to Citibank.
However, after receiving numerous complaints about not having received the payments. Citibank confirmed that all the payments had been made but referred the Belarusian finance ministry to international clearing and depository systems.
The depository and international clearing systems refused to discuss the matter with the Belarusian finance ministry, citing sanctions against Belarusian banks or the Russian banks that serviced them as the reason.
Seliverstov concluded that there was therefore no reason for Belarus to make payments in US dollars, as they will be stopped at some point and won't even reach "friendly" investors such as Russian ones.
Since the West excluded all Belarusian and Russian banks from SWIFT, there has been much speculation about possible difficulties for Belarus to settle its debt with foreign investors.
Already in April, Belarus announced that it would pay foreign debts in Belarusian rubles. With Seliverstov's recent statement it's clear that this announcement came as
bne:Deal
New Putin decree could force foreign stakeholders out of Sakhalin-2 gas project
Ben Aris in Berlin
Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a decree on June 30 that will transfer all rights and obligations of the Sakhalin-2 oil and gas project to a new Russian entity, in effect giving the Kremlin the power to nationalise foreigners’ stakes in what is one of the largest energy projects in the world, and escalating the ongoing gas wars.
Putin’s decree stipulates that Gazprom will keep its majority stake, but foreign investors must ask the Russian government for a stake in the newly created firm within one month or be dispossessed. The government will decide whether to approve any request.
complaints from foreign debtors kept rolling in, and that the decree and its various necessary administrative changes must have been under development for some time.
Belarus has found a way to pay its foreign debts, but the next question is whether it will have the money to do so, considering the harsh sanctions on its export sector.
The new way of servicing its foreign debt in Belarusian rubles will be made through transfers from Belarus' finance ministry to accounts in sanctioned Belarusbank, and Citibank has been granted the right of paying agent that's able to access this money.
In his statement on the matter, Seliverstov was notably irritated with the international clearing systems "freeing themselves from any liability and responsibility citing the sanctions as the reason."
Now, Belarus' finance ministry is putting the ball in the Western banks' court by making Citibank access the payments through the sanctioned Belarusbank.
One way or another, Citibank will probably manage to get hold of the payments and send them to the debtors. What Belarus finance ministry is probably worried about, although it hasn't said this, is that this headache is going to make many investors withdraw from Belarus in the future.
In the next phase in the ongoing gas wars, Russian President Putin has signed a decree transferring all the rights in the Sakhalin-2 gas projects to a new company and has given foreign partners in the project one month to apply for participation in the new entity. / wiki
Putin’s decree will only unsettle energy markets further and put more strain on the LNG market. Europe has imported record amounts of LNG this year as it races to fill its storage tanks ahead of the heating season. This week Europe imported more LNG than piped gas from Russia for the
first time ever, but that has put pressure on LNG producers, as current production capacity is not enough to meet the demand from both Asia and Europe simultaneously.
In that sense, Putin’s decree can be seen as a move to put more pressure on the West by concurrently restricting gas
www.bne.eu