Bloomberg: US Treasury warns banks against being overly cautious with sanctions

U.S. Deputy Treasury Secretary Brian Nelson is scheduled to meet in January with the heads of a number of the country’s banks to warn them against being too hard on the sanctions. The US financial authorities believe that banks are being overly cautious and refuse customers for fear of not complying with restrictions, informs Bloomberg.

Nelson intends to visit, in particular, Seattle, San Francisco and San Diego. “When financial institutions engage in risk reduction—indiscriminately cutting off access to financial infrastructure for entire categories of customers—ordinary Americans may be forced to turn to unregulated and potentially dangerous financial activities,” he said in a statement cited by the agency.

The deputy minister’s initiative highlights the problem the US has faced with sanctions: successive administrations have imposed them quickly and sometimes without much clarity, expecting financial institutions to comply with them themselves, according to Bloomberg. Banks that violate sanctions can be fined with heavy fines, so they often exercise extreme caution towards anyone who can be considered as the object of sanctions risk, the publication reports.

December 22 USA introduced new sanctions against Russia, restrictions affected 10 Russian companies. The black list includes legal entities associated with shipping. In particular, we are talking about the Central Research Institute of Marine Engineering, Morinformsistema-Agat Concern and Marine Navigation Systems JSC. Also, the restrictions affected the Central Research Institute of KM “Prometheus”, the concern “Elektropribor” and the Institute of Oceanology of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Shirshov. Another four companies included in the sanctions list are Obukhovskoye JSC, Technopol Company LLC, the Rigel battery company and the Aurora Research and Production Association concern.

Earlier, December 15, under US restrictions hit businessman Vladimir Potanin, Deputy Prime Ministers Andrei Belousov and Dmitry Chernyshenko, as well as the CEO and Chairman of the Board Russian Railways Oleg Belozerov and member of the Board of Directors of Russian Railways Sergei Frank. In addition, the sanctions affected a number of Russian governors. Organizations sanctioned include Rosbank and 17 more subsidiaries VTB.