The Russian International Investment Bank in Budapest is threatened with bankruptcy – mass media
The Budapest-based International Investment Bank (IIB), which is almost 50% Russian-owned and 25.27% Hungarian-owned, has used up almost all of its liquidity reserves after falling under EU sanctions.
Euractiv writes about this, reports “European Truth”.
Without its funds frozen by sanctions, the bank risks becoming insolvent or being forced to restructure its bonds as early as May 2023.
“I don’t know if it is possible to save the bank, which is in an extremely difficult situation,” – said last week the chief of staff of the Prime Minister of Hungary, Gergey Guijas.
In mid-December, the bank’s top manager sent a letter to the management, in which he said that the Belgian financial company Euroclear had blocked the MIB’s funds after the introduction of EU sanctions packages, and predicted “so serious a deficit for the first quarter of this year that even the sale of the loan portfolio will not be enough to compensate for it “.
In October 2022, the Belgian Ministry of Finance blocked the allocation of funds, arguing that several members of the bank’s board of directors “have ties to the Russian government, which has a controlling influence on the MIB.”
The letter made public after cyber attacks on the bank on February 17revealed that the Minister of Economic Development of Hungary, Marton Nagy, lobbied the Minister of Finance of Belgium to unblock MIB funds, but without success.
Another document, made public as a result of the cyber attack, provides for the inclusion of Serbia and an increase in the share of Hungarian capital.
The bank’s financial difficulties are a concern of the Hungarian government, which after Bulgaria left it in February became the only owner from EU member states, along with Russia, Cuba, Mongolia and Vietnam.
Revived by Vladimir Putin, the bank announced in 2018 that it would move its headquarters to Budapest. Then information spread about the financial institution that it could even serve intelligence purposes, but the bank repeatedly denied this.
It received this label because in 2019 the Hungarian parliament, in which the Fidesz party has a majority, voted to give the Russian-dominated bank full immunity from Hungarian authorities’ supervision, and managers and guests of the financial institution could to move through Hungary, and therefore the European Union, in accordance with the rules of diplomatic immunity.
