The global company - the copyright holder of the software (software) for working with SWIFT Finastra - refused to work with Russian sanctioned banks. This was told to Vedomosti by two people who know this from Finastra and banks. According to them, the software is used by two such players: Russian National commercial Bank(RNKB), which operates in the Crimea, and Tempbank, which has been temporarily administered.
Finastra, whose business is largely concentrated in the US and Canada, notified its Russian distributor Finnet that it will stop working with these banks from August 31, one of Vedomosti's interlocutors points out.
There are several manufacturers of software for working with SWIFT in the world, he continues, in Russia software from Finastra and from SWIFT itself (Alliance Access) is used. According to the second interlocutor, the vast majority of banks in Russia and the world use software from SWIFT.
The bank can switch to another SWIFT access interface, for this it needs to conclude an agreement and make technical settings, it will cost several tens of thousands of dollars, the first interlocutor estimates. He adds that it is important for banks to do this before August 31 so that they are not cut off from SWIFT during the transition to the new software.
How rogue nations live in economic isolation
The United States has disconnected Iranian banks from the global SWIFT payment system. Tehran has faced such troubles. Iran survived the blockade of the largest payment system and economic isolation in 2012. Then the country abandoned the dollar as a means of international settlements. Russia, which is under the yoke of current and announced sanctions, is also threatened with being disconnected from SWIFT. Therefore, we risk turning it into a pariah country on a par with Iran. It is quite possible that we will have to follow the example of Tehran on how to get out of this situation.
Legally, the White House does not have the competence to cut off banks of other countries from the international payment system, but in fact the decision of SWIFT (headquartered in Belgium) is regarded by the world as a consequence of pressure from the American authorities. Negotiations with SWIFT on Iran began in October. On November 2, US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said that the banking system had been informed of the need to turn off Iranian financial institutions that fell under sanctions. In SWIFT, I do not comment on the connection with US restrictions, explaining the shutdown with Iran by "ensuring stability and maintaining the integrity of the global financial system."
The sanctions are directed not only against Iran, but also other countries and foreign companies doing business with the National Iranian oil company and the Central Bank of Iran. The United States banned trade with the Middle Eastern state in oil and conduct financial affairs. However, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said that his country would “break through” US sanctions and “renew the path of economic prosperity.” Reassured the Iranians and the Central Bank of the state, said that the shutdown was expected and there is an opportunity to switch to analog payment systems.
Iran is no stranger to: the country recovered from a three-year economic isolation in 2015 after the agreements reached on the nuclear program. Now we will have to look again for ways to circumvent restrictive measures, but taking into account the experience of foreign policy isolation, the adaptation of the financial system should be faster. The country has national payment systems that are integrated with foreign companies. In addition, the foreign trade of the Islamic Republic in 2013 successfully reoriented to Asia, whose share in Iranian exports exceeds 90%. For example, in China there is an analogue of SWIFT - the CIPS payment system, with the help of which the Celestial Empire pays with partners in yuan.
Tehran is also not going to stop cooperation with Europe. In October, it became known that Iran was finalizing the development of a "special target mechanism" that would allow it to bypass US sanctions. The EU welcomes the creation of an alternative. The need to create a European analogue to protect German business from the impact of US sanctions was stated by German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas: "Germany wants to cooperate with Washington, but will not allow us to harm."
However, sanctions do more harm than good to Iran. The US is doing everything to bring oil exports from the country to zero. A repetition of the Iranian scenario is feared in Russia. Although the United States imposed sanctions against many countries, such as China, South Africa, Cuba, the similarity between Iran and the Russian Federation is that both states are highly dependent on the export of hydrocarbons.
During the period of anti-Russian sanctions in 2014, there were rumors about the disconnection of our banks from SWIFT. Then in Russia they created their own analogue - a transmission service financial statements SPFS. Banks and companies from the countries of the Eurasian Economic Union will be able to connect to the system. The Russian financial authorities claim that in terms of security, our analogue is not inferior to Western ones.
It remains to expand the geography. About 11 thousand connected to SWIFT financial institutions in 200 countries of the world (in the EAEU - only 6 countries). 4 billion payment orders and trillions of dollars a day pass through it every year. The system has become famous for ensuring complete security of transfers. However, you can find flaws in SWIFT - in 2016, hackers hacked into this system and stole more than $80 million.
“The United States is unlikely to go for disconnecting Russian banks from the SWIFT system, because this is fraught with interruptions in oil and gas supplies to Western Europe", - says Roman Tkachuk, senior analyst at Alpari. The expert also assessed the impact of anti-Irna sanctions on the ruble: since oil prices may go up due to restrictions, this may have a positive effect on the “wooden” ruble.
Finastra, the copyright holder of software for working with SWIFT, intends to break off cooperation with Russian sanctioned banks. We are talking about the Crimean Tempbank, where a temporary administration was introduced, and the RNKB, which managed to become a backbone on the annexed peninsula. The SWIFT network allows banks to exchange fast electronic messages - for example, about money transfers. The RNKB assures that disabling the software will not affect their work in any way.
Head of the coordinating center of the human rights committee "A Matter of Honor" in Crimea Victoria Zhukovskaya I am sure that disabling SWIFT will not affect consumers in any way.
– Banking system of Crimea according to international standards is now in its infancy. Russian systemically important banks do not come there because of sanctions, MasterCard cards and Visa do not work directly - only through the Russian processing center. RNKB is a very important bank, but Crimea was disconnected from the system international transfers back in 2014. This will not affect consumers - only the work of banks. For now, I suggest we wait and see where RNKB's disconnection from SWIFT will lead.
Deputy Editor-in-Chief of the Banki.ru portal Semyon Novoprudsky believes that now large Russian banks definitely will not come to the Crimea.
Lack of SWIFT nullifies all international activity
Semyon Novoprudsky
- If a bank operates within Russia, then the SWIFT system is practically not needed. But if it's about international market, then it is impossible to do without it: each remittance you have to do it literally by hand, separately agreeing on it - everyone has long lost the habit of this. AT modern world the number of transactions is extremely high, so the lack of SWIFT nullifies all international activity. Therefore, large Russian banks are still openly talking about their unwillingness to enter the Crimea. They can name among the reasons the lack of business attractiveness and not be cunning: it is extremely difficult to make money on the peninsula now, and the risks are too high.
Ukrainian investment banker Sergey Fursa believes that the main problem of the financial system of Crimea is not the lack of SWIFT.
- Of course, the work of the SWIFT system is very important - as an indicator financial development one territory or another. However, under the sanctions, shutting down the system is of little importance - everything is already bad. If foreign investors would like to enter Crimea, this would be a problem, but for them the peninsula remains a dangerous zone. Not only because of financial constraints - money is not invested where the rule of law is not ensured.
(Vladislav Lentsev worked on the text version of the material)
In mid-January, Russian and Ukrainian media disseminated the news: diesel generators from the German concern MAN were delivered to the Zaliv shipyard in Kerch. Western equipment again ended up in the sanctions Crimea. The press of both countries presented the information dryly, although until quite recently Kyiv reacted painfully to such violations, and Moscow reacted with ill-concealed triumph. There really is nothing to be surprised about. Siemens, Adidas, Metro Cash&Carry, Auchan, Volkswagen, DHL, Valve, Visa, Mastercard, Lithuanian Novus - this is not a complete list of Western companies successfully operating on the Crimean peninsula. Many of them do it legally. We publish methods for circumventing sanctions.
The list of restrictive measures approved by the European Union on July 30, 2014, specifically prohibits European enterprises from working in Crimea in the energy, tourism and financial areas. That is, European energy equipment should not be supplied to the peninsula, citizens of the EU countries should not own Crimean hotels, and European banks and payment systems should not work in Crimea. The same restrictions apply to American citizens and corporations.
However, from all of the above, there are no foreign hoteliers on the peninsula.
Recent example. In July last year, a scandal erupted in Europe over gas turbines supplied to the Crimea by the German company Siemens for power plants under construction in Simferopol and Sevastopol. The issue of violating the sanctions regime was raised before Siemens by the Eastern Committee of the German Economy, the collective body of German business associations. "No German company can afford to be suspected of sanctions evasion," he said. CEO Committee Michael Harms. This statement ended everything.
Russia took the brunt. Here, for example, are the words of the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine Pavlo Klimkin: “A lesson for all responsible business: any cooperation with Russia is interaction with scammers<…>My advice to Siemens and all those involved in transactions with Russian state-owned companies: when they shake your hand, then count your fingers.”
Siemens is now unsuccessfully suing in Russian court, demands the return of turbines from the Crimea to Taman. In the first instance, the German company expectedly lost, and the Federation Council has already stated that the turbines will not return from the Crimea in any case. In a word, they remain in the Crimea, and Siemens becomes a victim. Finnish Wartsila, a manufacturer of diesel generators, refuses to follow his path: the company rejects the proposal of the Russian side to supply generators to the Kerch shipyard Zaliv. Refers to sanctions. But soon in Kerch, generators of the German MAN are found in the required quantity. The company itself says that they know nothing about the deliveries, and immediately assume that the Crimean plant could have received equipment intended for other enterprises.
It is difficult to say whether the German companies knew that their equipment would end up in the Crimea, or whether they were really deceived. However, we have a clearly working scheme to bypass sanctions.
Visa and Mastercard, after the annexation of Crimea to Russia, announced that they were leaving the peninsula. And they left. It was impossible to pay in Crimea for about a year bank cards these payment systems. However, in 2015 the cards started working. Moreover, Crimean banks began to issue them.
“Our corporation is fully complying with US sanctions,” Mastercard representatives responded to media inquiries. “Visa strictly complies with the legislation applicable to its activities. In accordance with the sanctions imposed in December 2014 by the US Treasury Office for Foreign Assets Control, Visa cannot provide services and offer its products on the territory of Crimea,” Visa noted. And they didn't cheat. It turned out that the Central Bank of Russia outplayed the representatives of payment systems, obliging them to transfer processing centers to service domestic transactions in the territory of the Russian Federation. After that, Visa and Mastercard employees were forced to state that they simply could not track transactions from Crimea.
“In fact, they are working with us without our knowledge,” a source familiar with the situation told Novaya Gazeta. - When the NSPK was created in July 2014, we were simply forced to transfer domestic Russian operations, including Crimean ones, to be processed there. This was the requirement of the law, otherwise you could lose all Russian market. Now the situation is as follows: Crimean transactions are processed not in the United States, as it was before, but in Moscow. We continue to implement the sanctions formally, but in reality we were simply pushed aside.
However, payment cards Visa systems and Mastercard issued by Crimean banks are unsuitable for use abroad.
In April 2017, the Prosecutor's Office of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea (a structure of the Prosecutor's Office of Ukraine) initiated criminal proceedings on the fact of the operation of the stores of the French trading network Auchan on the peninsula. The French not only continued to work in Crimea, but also import products for their stores through the Kerch ferry, which is a direct violation of EU sectoral sanctions.
The results of the prosecutor's investigation were submitted to the European Commission. Then followed the reaction of the trading network itself. Auchan Holding Senior Vice President for Communications Antoine Pernot said in an interview with RNS: "We have decided that we will continue to offer some vital products to the population of Crimea, in particular food, and we will not cut the number of jobs." Perno noted that the work of Auchan in Crimea does not violate sanctions. And it's true: the Crimean assets of the company after the "Russian spring" were re-registered for Russian entity- LLC "Auchan". “Russian franchise retailers are subject to the law Russian Federation, and not the legislation of the European Union, ”the press service of Auchan Holding explains.
The criminal case initiated by the Prosecutor's Office of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea had no consequences for the French company.
The example of "Auchan" was followed by another chain of hypermarkets - the German Metro Cash & Carry. Metro has two stores in Crimea: in Simferopol and Sevastopol. After the “Russian spring”, they were rewritten to Retail Property 6 LLC, created on November 20, 2014, registered in Moscow. That is, all Metro structures have been withdrawn from the threat of sanctions.
In April 2016, at the Yalta International Economic Forum, the head of Crimea, Sergei Aksenov, spoke about the effectiveness of re-registration of companies to circumvent sanctions. “There are a lot of tools to overcome the sanctions regime, but, in my opinion, they should not be discussed in the public field. I can only say that today the majority of foreign entrepreneurs register their enterprises on the mainland of the Russian Federation and after that they enter Crimea.”
After the imposition of sanctions, a number of popular electronic services: AppStore, Google Play, Origin and Steam game stores, Coursera educational service.
The solution to the problem in this case was born before it appeared: anonymity on the Internet existed long before the “Crimean spring”. Today, almost every Crimean has an anonymizer or VPN service installed on a tablet, phone or computer, thanks to which his IP address is identified not as Crimean, but as Moscow, Nizhny Novgorod or even London. Thus, although Google and Apple do comply with sanctions against Crimea, in fact, their bans do not work on the peninsula.
On January 3, 2018, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin launched an angry tirade against some Western companies operating in Crimea.
“There are companies that allow their retailers, such as Volkswagen or Adidas-Crimea, to classify (themselves) as Russian territory. We will get them not only by political, but also by legal methods,” Klimkin said.
Volkswagen's reaction followed the next day. “The Group’s brands adhere to the sanctions and comply with decisions made. Contrasting estimates surprise us, ”the press service of the German auto giant said. Adidas also told Deutsche Welle journalists that they were complying with the sanctions regime.
And it looks like they didn't lie. I studied the list of US and EU sanctions against Crimea. The United States has indeed imposed a strict moratorium on doing business for its businesses. The Americans do not have the right to supply any goods to the peninsula, even through intermediaries. EU bans are much more liberal. The restrictions are sectoral in nature: European companies cannot work in Crimean oil production, Crimean tourism, Crimean banking, energy, telecommunications. But there is no ban on trade in cars, clothing and food. Moreover, in a number of EU countries government bodies Legislated powers to issue permits for the sale of goods and services in the Crimea.
The Russian National Commercial Bank (RNCB), operating in Crimea, confirmed that the British company Finastra, which develops software for working with international system SWIFT settlements, refused to work with the bank due to anti-Russian sanctions.
"The termination of relations with Finastra does not affect the business of RNKB and its clients," a representative of the bank's press service told the Prime agency. He recalled that the activities of the RNKB are carried out only on the territory of Russia and there are no payments through Western credit organizations is not carried out. Currently, the RNCB uses the settlement system of the Central Bank of Russia and other systems that ensure the speed and quality of settlements, the credit institution noted.
Earlier, on August 24, the Vedomosti newspaper reported that Finastra, whose business is mainly concentrated in the United States and Canada, notified its Russian distributor Finnet that it would stop working with Russian banks that were on Western sanctions lists from August 31. The interlocutors of the publication noted that in Russia the Finastra software is used by two banks in their work with SWIFT, including RNKB and Tempbank. They explained that in the world several manufacturers at once produce software for working with SWIFT. The vast majority of banks in Russia and the world use software from SWIFT itself (Alliance Access).
The interlocutors of the newspaper noted that after Finastra's refusal to cooperate, banks in working with SWIFT could switch to Alliance Access software. To do this, you only need to conclude an agreement, make technical settings and pay several tens of thousands of dollars.
First call?
Nevertheless, Finastra's refusal to cooperate with Russian sanctioned banks again reminded of the threat to deprive Russian credit organizations of access to SWIFT. September 18, 2014 European Parliament "The situation in Ukraine and the state of relations between European Union and Russia”, in which he urged to think about such restrictive measures as the exclusion of Russia from the SWIFT system of international settlements.
A few days later, nine US senators at the US Treasury with a request to disconnect Russian banks, against which Washington imposed sanctions due to the events in Ukraine, from the SWIFT payment system (then the US imposed sanctions against Sberbank, Bank of Moscow, Gazprombank, Rosselkhozbank, VEB and VTB) . “Even a partial disconnect from SWIFT could have dramatic consequences for Russian economy as happened with Iran in 2012 when, under international pressure, Iranian banks were cut off from SWIFT,” Illinois Republican Senator Mark Kirk said.
At that time, SWIFT itself said that it was to disconnect Russia from the system of international settlements. Source Reuters agencies, why not all countries support turning off the Russian banking system from the system of interbank settlements and transfers SWIFT. “The problem is that while this will probably work well in the short term, as in the case of Iran, in the long term it will lead to the creation of an alternative SWIFT system and the emergence of two alternative world settlement systems, and no one wants this,” he said. he.
Then Russia was one of the largest users of the SWIFT system in terms of the number of user banks. According to the results of 2013, the country ranked 15th in terms of total SWIFT financial telecommunications traffic - 73.7 million messages.
Russian response
In December 2014, the head of VTB, Andrey Kostin, that disconnecting Russian banks from SWIFT "would mean war". In January 2015, he stated that if the disconnection from SWIFT happens, it will lead to a sharp deterioration in relations between the US and Russia. "The next day, both the US ambassador in Moscow and the Russian ambassador in Washington can leave," the head of VTB said.
He recalled that this has already happened between the US and Iran. As a result, according to Kostin, political dialogue and "any other relationship" between the two countries ceased. Against the background of statements about a possible disconnection from SWIFT, the Central Bank decided to create an alternative system of international settlements. In mid-November, Deputy Director of the Department of the National Payment System of the Bank of Russia Ramil Kanafina, that in May 2015 the Central Bank plans to launch its financial messaging system. In the middle of December National system payment cards (NSPK) started test connection of banks.
In March 2017, the head of the Central Bank, Elvira Nabiullina, at a meeting with President Vladimir Putin, announced that the Russian financial system was protected in case of disconnection from the SWIFT interbank system and international payment systems. She recalled that the processing of foreign payment systems has been transferred to Russia and already more than 90% of ATMs and payment terminals are ready to accept Russian map"World". “There were threats related to the fact that we could be disconnected from SWIFT. We have also finalized our payment system, and if something happens, all transactions in the SWIFT format will work within the country, we have created such an analogue,” Nabiullina noted.
Founded in 1973, the international payment system SWIFT is based in Brussels. In the entire history of its existence, SWIFT was disconnected once, in 2012, when, under international pressure, it was decided to disconnect Iranian banks from the payment system.
