Following Russia's invasion of Ukraine, many countries, including the United States, the European Union, and the United Kingdom, unveiled the most punitive penalties to date against Russia, the latest in a barrage of sanctions rolled out in response to the country’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Japan, Taiwan, Australia, and New Zealand have followed suit.
The new sanctions, which were announced on Saturday, are aimed squarely at Russia's central bank and aim to stifle the country's access to the global financial system. They are intended to isolate the Russian economy, building on recent sanctions targeting oligarchs, banks, high-tech companies, and aircraft manufacturers.
We look at the latest developments in finance and the economy and how your teams can make sure you’re prepared for these changes.
Individuals
The assets of Russian President Vladimir Putin, his Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, and Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, as well as the FSB security chief Alexander Bortnikov, the commander of the armed forces Valery Gerasimov, and members of the Kremlin's security council, have been frozen in the EU, US, and the UK.
The EU has imposed sanctions on all 351 members of Russia's parliament, the Duma; the US and UK, as well as Australia, Japan, and New Zealand, have targeted specific members.
The UK has imposed a £50,000 limit on Russian bank accounts in the UK, and the EU has imposed a €100,000 limit on EU banks.
More than a dozen billionaire oligarchs with ties to Putin's regime are on asset freeze, and travel ban lists around the world, including Andrey Patrushev (oil company Rosneft), Petr Fradkov (Promsvyazbank), Yury Slyusar (United Aircraft), Boris Rotenberg (gas pipeline company SMP), Denis Bortnikov (VTB bank), and Kirill Shamalov, Putin's daughter Kat Top state-owned bank executives from VTB and Sberbank have also been sanctioned by the US. Canada and Australia have also sanctioned multiple oligarchs.
Finance and Economy
The European Union, the United States, the UK and Canada have agreed to "prevent the Russian central bank from using its international reserves in ways that undermine the impact of our sanctions." To "paralyse its assets," the EU has since banned all transactions with the institution, which has €640 billion in reserves.
Russian state-owned companies' shares are no longer traded on European stock exchanges, and the Russian government is effectively barred from raising sovereign debt in the United Kingdom and elsewhere.
The EU, US, UK, and Canada are also removing several Russian banks from the Swift international payments system. Their names have not yet been revealed. This, according to Brussels, will "prevent them from operating globally and effectively block Russian exports and imports."
The US has imposed restrictions on Russia's top ten financial institutions, which account for about 80% of its banking sector, including prohibiting the largest – Sberbank, which accounts for about 30% of Russian banking – and its subsidiaries from transacting through the US system.
Many other Russian banks' assets have been subjected to strict asset freezes and new business restrictions in the EU, UK, US, and elsewhere, including VTB, the country's second-largest bank, Bank Rossiya, and Promsvyazbank.
Learn more about the United States Department of Justice.
Tookitaki’s Sanctions Screening Solutions
When doing business with customers from Russia or with ties to Russia, businesses must ensure that they are not breaking international sanctions.
Explore Tookitaki’s Smart Screening solution, powered by real-time screening and cutting-edge machine learning technology to enable efficient, accurate, risk-based sanctions checks against Russia.
Name Matching Like No Other
Our powerful name-matching engine screens and prioritises all name search hits, ensuring efficiency in the investigation process and reducing the cost of compliance.
This entails putting in place a suitable sanctions screening solution that is kept up to date with the most recent sanctions data and supports the Russian language via translation and transliteration.
The specific challenges of screening potential Russian sanction targets, such as non-Western naming conventions, non-Latinate characters, and the use of nicknames and aliases, should all be taken into account for effective sanctions screening.
- It enables you to achieve 80% precision and 90% recall levels in your screening programme
- Advanced machine learning engine that powers 50+ name-matching techniques
- Comprehensive matching is enabled by the use of multiple attributes i.e; name, address, gender, date of birth, incorporation and more
- Individual language models to improve accuracy across 18+ languages (including Russian) and 10 different scripts
- Built-in transliteration engine for effective cross-lingual matching
- Scalable to support massive watchlist data
Screen Transactions In Real-Time
Our state-of-the-art screening architecture provides faster and more accurate matching that reduces held transactions. Our system automatically screens your existing customer base against any changes or additions to watchlists in real time. They’ll be detected and flagged with zero human intervention, leaving your team to concentrate on other issues.
- Real-time screening of parties involved in the transaction against sanctions lists of your choosing
- Near-matching capabilities powered by advanced machine learning produce highly accurate screening results, ensuring that legitimate payments are not delayed
Drive Operational Efficiency
Our self-adaptive system significantly reduces false positives, which allows you to focus on material risk.
- Using an AI-powered risk-based strategy, alerts are automatically triaged into three risk categories
- 85% - 90% of low-value alerts can be closed through fast alert disposition
- 60%+ reduction in false positives in comparison to legacy systems
Speak to a member of the team to learn more and ensure you’re not breaching international sanctions.
