Companies from Russia face delays in payments for oil

Russian oil companies face payment delays as banks in China, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) fear secondary US sanctions. This is reported by the Reuters agency with reference to sources.

According to the interlocutors of the agency, several banks in China, the UAE and Turkey have tightened their requirements for compliance with sanctions, which has led to delays or even refusal of money transfers to Moscow. Banks began asking their clients to provide written guarantees that no individual or legal entity from the US sanctions list is involved in the transaction and is not a beneficiary of the payment.

According to sources, two banks in the UAE – First Abu Dhabi Bank and Dubai Islamic Bank – blocked several accounts related to trade in Russian goods. Bank Mashreq in the UAE, Turkey’s Ziraat and VakifBank, as well as the Chinese banks ICBC and Bank of China still process payments, but they take weeks or months to process. The agency could not get comments from the banks.

Kremlin representative Dmitry Peskov, responding to a question about delays in payments through Chinese banks, said that there are problems with payments. “Of course, the unprecedented pressure from the United States and the European Union on the People’s Republic of China continues,” Peskov said, adding that this cannot become an obstacle to the further development of trade and economic relations between Russia and China.

• In January, it became known that Turkish banks refuse to work with Russian banks, fearing secondary sanctions from the United States. Almost all Turkish banks have severed correspondent relations with credit organizations in Russia and suspended the processing of their payments.
• The situation worsened in December 2023, when the 12th package of sanctions of the European Union entered into force, and US President Joe Biden signed a decree on secondary sanctions. Both documents appeared in response to the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine.