The last of russia's large state-owned banks, which maintains access to the SWIFT system and settlements in major world currencies, will become the object of new U.S. sanctions.
The White House is considering the possibility of blacklisting Gazprombank (GPB), the third-largest bank in the russian federation in terms of assets, which is a "hub" for gas settlements with Europe.
As Nikkei reports with reference to officials familiar with the matter, GPB may fall under blocking sanctions: it will be prohibited from any transactions with American banks.
A decision on sanctions will be made by the end of November – the U.S. has informed its G7 partners about it, the publication's sources, including high-ranking European officials, said.
One-third directly owned by Gazprom, and another 40% by its pension fund, Gazprombank has not yet fallen under strict Western organizations: in the U.S. it is only prohibited to raise capital on the debt market, although its top managers and subsidiary IT company are under blocking sanctions.
In the European Union, GPB also avoided "blacklists", and only the United Kingdom introduced blocking sanctions against the bank.
As a result, the bank could become one of the main operators of the giant reserves of foreign currency that the kremlin has accumulated abroad after the central bank's assets in the West were frozen. As of mid-2024, these "shadow reserves" have reached USD 180 billion, Janis Kluge, a researcher at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs, estimated.
In his opinion, this money can be used to pay for critical imports or support the ruble exchange rate if the situation in the russian economy radically deteriorates.
The chief economist of the Institute of International Finance (IIF), Robin Brooks, generally referred to GPB as "the new Central Bank of russia." Unlike Elvira Nabiullina's Bank of russia, which is liquidated as a subject of the global financial system and can only conduct yuan operations, Gazprombank has accumulated tens of billions of euros and can manage the ruble exchange rate.
In addition to gas, the bank also acted as one of the main settlement centers for the export of russian gold.
Since the beginning of 2023, GPB has had problems with operations in dollars after the American JPMorgan Chase Bank and Bank of New York Mellon (BoNY) closed its correspondent accounts. According to a message on the bank's website, transfers in euros, as well as in Chinese yuan and Kazakhstani tenge, are now available to it, as before.
A few years after vladimir putin came to power, the bank came under the influence of the closest friends of the president - Yuriy Kovalchuk and Nikolay Shamalov. Members of the Kovalchuk and Shamalov families and other representatives of putin's elite worked in the bank and its controlling structures.
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