"Until now, payments have been tracked and assessed for compliance with current sanctions regulations, but due to the development of the situation in Ukraine and after the further tightening of measures, the bank decided to stop their implementation.
It will be possible to accept incoming payments if they do not contradict the current sanctions regulations and the bank's sanctions policy," said the Czech branch of Raiffeisenbank.
Differences with Russia and Belarus will cease from February 15, 2023.
They specified that earlier restrictions were imposed against Iran, Afghanistan, Sudan and Syria.
After the start of the war and the subsequent annexation of part of the territory of Eastern Ukraine, the ban on incoming and outgoing payments also extends to the annexed territories of the Crimean Peninsula, Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhia and Kherson regions.
Other branches of the international network of Raiffeisen Bank International have not announced similar restrictions yet.
The contact center of "Priorbank" - the Belarusian "daughter" of the Austrian company - was unable to clarify whether the restrictions of the Czech bank will affect their clients in any way.
"We have not received any information," the contact center reported, writes Zerkalo.
The bank is not under sanctions, but was persecuted in Belarus
In August 2021, Raiffeisen Bank International limited cooperation with Belarusbank through sanctions against Belarus.
Three banks — Belarusbank, Belagroprombank and Belinvestbank — were previously subject to sectoral sanctions of the European Union.
In November 2022, "Priorbank" updated tariffs for private customers: SWIFT transfers in dollars and euros disappeared from the list of services.
From the current version of the "Priorbank" tariffs, it follows that special conditions for international transfers are now in effect.
It should be noted that last year in Belarus, the founder and head of the board of "Priorbank"
Syarhei Kastyuchenko was convicted
.
He was detained on March 9.
In August, the banker was sentenced to 3.5 years in prison, he was found guilty of tax evasion, which entailed particularly large losses.
Together with Kastyuchenko, two businessmen were sentenced: they each received 3 years of imprisonment.
They were found guilty of the fact that in the period from December 1, 2007 to January 22, 2021, in violation of the High-Tech Park Regulation by deliberately understating the tax base, including by entering knowingly false information in tax returns, they evaded paying taxes on the total amount is more than 1.5 million rubles.
There is unconfirmed information that shortly before his arrest, he refused Lukashenka's favorite, hockey coach
Dmitriy Baskav
, a request to finance the hockey team "Dynamo".