MOSCOW, September 30. /ITAR-TASS/. Russian major state-run bank VTB mulls possible lawsuits over Western sanctions imposed on several Russian banks, as these restrictions violate international norms.
“Our group of lawyers jointly with a group of foreign legal consultants are working on this issue,” VTB Bank CEO Andrey Kostin said in an interview with Izvestia daily on Tuesday.
“The application of the so-called sanctions without the UN mandate certainly violates international law norms...It was reported that one of the main results of the G20 activity were well-coordinated decisions taken to step up international financial stability and to improve supervision over the financial sector. But if now several G20 states seek to ruin the banking sector of Russia, another member of this organization, this is hard to say how we can build financial cooperation in the future,” Kostin noted.
In this respect, he proposed not to overestimate unbiased nature of international courts, because “sanctions have not a legal, but a political basis.” “After all, the main decision lies in political field,” he added.
The Russian banking sector, under the guidance of the government and the Central Bank, is developing measures for further work over Western sanctions, Kostin said. “Creating a national payment system, establishing a domestic rating agency, developing settlements in different currencies, primarily in rubles, are among them (the priorities),” the VTB Bank CEO added.