Gref was considered a cold war “child’s play” compared to the US sanctions
The head of Sberbank German Gref has warned the West against toughening anti-Russian sanctions.
In an interview with the Financial Times Gref said that in the case of the introduction of new us sanctions in the next year “the cold war seem like child’s play”. He called the “irrational” idea to exclude Russian state banks from the Swift system.
The idea of such sanctions has been discussed by Western politicians, the publication. This was said by British Prime Minister David Cameron, a call was contained in a resolution of the European Parliament.
So far, this initiative was seen as a radical option, however, in early February the idea of tightening sanctions against enterprises with participation of the state and people from the entourage of President Vladimir Putin plans to discuss the Congress after evaluation of the Ministry of Finance of the United States.
In mid-may, Gref in an interview with CNBC skeptical about the possible mitigation of anti-Russian sanctions.
“Sanctions were imposed for political reasons, and their removal is likely also to be motivated by politics. This is to some extent a dead end,” — said the head of Sberbank.
International interbank system SWIFT (Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication) unites more than 10 thousand Bank and financial organizations in 210 countries of the world. A year through the system is transmitted in the order of 1.8 billion messages.
6 October, SWIFT said he did not intend to turn off Russia from its services. In a statement the company noted that SWIFT regrets exerted on it the pressure and the accompanying media environment. The company takes a position of neutrality and is not going to make unilateral decisions about disabling any country. SWIFT said that a trip can happen only if the appropriate decision would be taken by the EU authorities.