The European Union has agreed to cut seven Russian banks off the SWIFT banking system, including VTB Bank PJSC and Bank Rossiya, according to sources.
Russia's biggest lender — Sberbank PJSC — was spared from the sanctions being put in place over Russia's invasion of Ukraine, Bloomberg News reported Tuesday.
The SWIFT financial-messaging system allows trillions of dollars of transactions around the world. It's a messaging network that financial institutions use for secure transmission of information and instructions on handling of funds.
The EU decision falls short of what some countries, like Poland, had requested to punish Russia and Vladimir Putin for the invasion, according to the report.
Other banks to be kicked off SWIFT include Bank Otkritie, Novikombank, Promsvyazbank PJSC, Sovcombank PJSC and VEB.RF, sources told Bloomberg.
"We will always comply with applicable sanctions laws," SWIFT said in a statement Tuesday. "We are engaging with these authorities to understand which entities will be subject to these new measures and will disconnect them once we receive legal instruction to do so."
Banks use Belgian-based SWIFT to send millions of instructions daily supporting trillions of dollars in payments annually to underpin international trade.
The Council of EU states, which is expected to publish a list of the banks affected, did not comment immediately.
The world's financial system is severing ties with Russia and its banks to stop Russian companies raising funds on foreign markets.
EU-based securities settlement house Euroclear said Tuesday it will no longer accept the rouble as a settlement currency and it was disabling its account with ING Bank in Moscow immediately.
Trading platform Tradeweb said it has suspended trading in securities affected by Russian sanctions.
Market sources said Bloomberg had flagged Russian sovereign bonds as well as securities related to Russian banks VTB and Sberbank with a warning label saying "sanctions apply to this security" though trading continued.
The London Stock Exchange said Tuesday it will stop trading in two global depository receipts (GDRs) for Russia's VTB Bank after Britain's financial regulator suspended them in response to sanctions.
However, listings on the LSE in Gazprom and Sberbank were still trading and down sharply on the day.
Denmark's Saxo Bank said it had halted trading pairs of the Russian rouble with other currencies such as the dollar and euro.
Major securities settlement houses, along with Deutsche Boerse in Frankfurt, and ICE and Nasdaq in New York, announced curbs on Russian trading Monday.
Eric Mack ✉
Eric Mack has been a writer and editor at Newsmax since 2016. He is a 1998 Syracuse University journalism graduate and a New York Press Association award-winning writer.
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