MOSCOW, January 21. /ITAR-TASS World Service/. Russia’s Central Bank (CBR) on Monday revoked licenses of another two banks and one non-bank lending institution. The Kurgan-base Nadezhnost (“reliability”) bank, Makhachkala-based Imbank and Moscow-based non-bank lending institution National Clearing Company were stripped of their licenses.
Nadezhnost bank turned out to be unreliable in terms of compliance with legislation, the Rossiyskaya Gazeta newspaper writes. It failed to comply with the requirements to counteract money laundering and terrorism financing. The bank was on the 843rd place in Russia in terms of the capital size, owning 463.5 million rubles. In the Kurgan region it was third regarding the sum of its assets. “At the same time, the lending institution was involved in suspicious operations in large volumes. The management and owners of the lending institution failed to take the necessary measures aimed at normalizing its activity,” the CBR press service said. That is why the regulatory authority had to take the last resort measures, removing the bank from the market.
The banks did not comply with the anti-money laundering and terrorism financing legislation, failing to send to the authorized body information on operations that are subject to control, the Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper writes.
Although sanctions against these organizations were applied for objective reasons, the situation with license revocation itself clearly shows that the CBR intends to continue further the “cleanup” policy in the banking sector, the Novye Izvestia newspaper writes. In the long term such trend should improve the sector. However, only unfair competition and a bias towards state-run banks, the newspaper notes.
Since the beginning of the year it is already the second case of revocation of licenses by the Central Bank, the Novye Izvestia daily recalls. On January 8, the CBR revoked license from the Novokuznetsk Municipal Bank. Meanwhile, in 2013, as many 32 banks were stripped of their licenses. Dmitry Miroshnichenko, a senior researcher at the Development Centre of the Higher School of Economics, told the newspaper that such a noticeable imbalance when more than two-thirds of revocations took place in the past four months had negatively affected the system. Instead of strengthening the sector, the “cleanup” has rather unhinged it, touching off panic among the depositors that preferred to quickly transfer their assets from minor banks to large banks with state ownership. Sberbank’s December financial reporting clearly show this - its monthly growth of deposits of individuals reached 644 billion rubles, which is almost equal to the gross growth for the preceding 11 months of 2013 (732 billion rubles).
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