The European Union reportedly has voted to exclude seven Russian banks from SWIFT, the messaging network underpinning global financial transactions.
A senior EU official said Wednesday that the European Commission is checking the extent to which crypto is being used as a means of working around sanctions imposed on Russia since its invasion of Ukraine, according to a report by Reuters.
As yet another international economic sanction against Russia, in response to its war on Ukraine, leading Western nations had pledged to bar several large Russian banks from using the SWIFT system.
The targetted banks include one of Russia's second-largest banks VTB, along with Bank Otkritie, Novikombank, Promsvyazbank, Rossiya Bank, Sovcombank and Vnesheconombank (VEB).
A senior EU official said that the banks on its list were chosen based on their connections to the Russian state, Reuters reported.
According to several reports, the targeted institutions have 10 days to phase out their operations with the network.
However, Sberbank, Russia's largest lender, and Gazprombank have not been included in the list.
The exclusion of these two banks from the proposal shows the continuing level of concern over the economic consequences for Europe and the West from financially isolating Russia.
The decision to boot some Russian banks off the SWIFT messaging system was announced over the weekend in a joint statement by the Commission, U.S., France, Germany, Italy, U.K. and Canada.
SWIFT, which stands for the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication, is an independent enterprise based in Belgium that provides a messaging system linking more than 11,000 banks and financial institutions in over 200 countries and territories.
(with agency inputs)
