Against the backdrop of tougher sanctions against Russia, some European banks have completely stopped accepting SWIFT transfers from Russian credit institutions.

One of the largest banks in Switzerland - PostFinance, Estonian LHV Pank, French Banque Populaire, and also Finnish S-BANK confirmed to Izvestia the information about blocking such operations.

S-BANK stopped accepting SWIFT payments from Russia since the beginning of the special operation in Ukraine, and LHV Pank conducted the last such transfer at the end of August, bank representatives reported. The other credit organizations did not specify when exactly they began to block such operations but linked the restrictions to the economic situation and sanctions.

Russians complained about the inability to send SWIFT transfers to these banks on the feedback platform of these transactions. According to the comments, apart from the indicated foreign credit organizations, not a single payment has reached the Italian Poste Italiane bank, the Swiss Credit Suisse, the Swedish Swedbank and the bank in New Zealand - Westpac New Zealand.

Most often, the money was returned to the sender’s account within 2 to 26 days, minus the commission, but sometimes the funds “disappeared”.

From February 2022, European credit organizations are prohibited to accept deposits from Russians worth over €10,000, there are no other formal restrictions in Europe, however, EU regulatory requirements require additional checks in relation to any money that comes from Russia, commented the founder of Anderida Financial Group, Aleksey Tarapovsky.

Thus, many financial organizations refuse to accept SWIFT-transfers from Russia on their own initiative, not wanting to spend additional resources on checks and fearing the risk that the accepted payment may appear to be done by a sanctioned person.

The expert said that this situation is dangerous due to impossibility to predict which bank has decided to tighten the rules at the moment, wherein the number of such credit organizations is increasing more and more.

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