Raiffeisen said the Grizzly Research report is misleading and contains factual errors. A bank representative said the company has been trying for many years to sell its Russian business and leave Russia, and that its compliance systems have been repeatedly audited.
In the Grizzly Research report, Raiffeisen and its Russian subsidiary are named as one of the key channels for circumventing sanctions. The authors of the study claim that trade transactions with Russia worth $1.19 billion passed through the bank, including sanctioned goods used by the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation.
Bloomberg Intelligence analysts believe Grizzly Research may be exaggerating RBI’s sanctions risks. In their view, transactions through the bank’s Russian subsidiary alone do not prove sanctions evasion.
Raiffeisen Bank International’s main asset in Russia is its subsidiary, JSC Raiffeisenbank. The bank remains the largest Western lender in the country and has not been hit by Western sanctions.
Raiffeisen announced plans to wind down its operations in Russia in the first weeks of Russia’s full-scale war against Ukraine, but it has still not left the Russian market. Russian authorities are blocking the sale of the bank’s Russian business, and the deal is possible only with approval from the Russian authorities.
The report also says that Moscow wants to keep the bank in Russia as a channel for settlements with Western countries, above all with Europe. At the same time, the US has also pressured Raiffeisen over its work with Russia, and analysts see a more serious risk for the bank in the attention of the US Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) or the European Central Bank.
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