By Julien Leroy, Senior Legal Adviser
The sixth package of restrictive measures against Russia and Belarus has been published in the Official Journal of the European Union. The ABBL has therefore published its technical note, summarising the novelties within the five latest (EU) Council Regulations, with all relevant parts for the financial sector.
Key points of these 5 new EU regulations:
- The new EU Regulations add new sanctioned persons (individuals -mostly military staff- and legal entities) to the list of both (EU) Regulations N°269/2014 and N°765/2006.
- Three additional Russian banks are being excluded from SWIFT as from 14 June 2022 (Sberbank, Credit Bank of Moscow, Joint Stock Company Russian Agricultural Bank) as well as one more Belarusian Bank (Belinvestbank).
- New prohibitions to provide financing or financial assistance to the purchase/import of crude oil/petroleum products originating in Russia or exported from Russia and to the transport to third countries of crude oil/petroleum products originating in/exported from Russia have been enacted (new art. 3m&3n – (EU) R. N°833/2014).
- New derogations concerning deposits have been introduced (art. 5c – (EU) R. N°833/2014).
- Derogations pertaining to the prohibition to provide services to trust and act as trustee have been added (new art. 5m – (EU) R. N°833/2014).
- A new prohibition to provide, directly or indirectly, accounting, auditing, including statutory audit, bookkeeping/tax consulting services, business and management consulting or public relations services to the government of Russia or legal persons established in Russia has been instituted (see new art. 5n – (EU) R. N°833/2014).
The updated technical note gives financial actors a clear view of the technical developments introduced by the last five regulations. A compilation of the new Council (EU) regulations will be available soon.