Unicredit has already paid the price, with a precautionary seizure of 463 million of its Russian assets by Moscow, but the same has now entered the field ECB. The Eurotower would in fact have ordered the European banks over which it exercises supervisory powers to quickly prepare and deliver an orderly plan to withdraw from Vladimir Putin’s reign.
In fact, the ECB’s fear would be that the institutions of the Old Continent will also end up in the meat grinder American sanctions. A big problem considering that Washington is a much more important trading partner for our country than it is Russiaespecially after the embargo triggered in response to the invasion of Ukraine.
According to what was revealed by Financial Times, European banks must therefore send an action plan to the bureaucrats in Frankfurt by June. But it would be better to say a retreat plan to avoid the risk of a Caporetto. Recently, under diplomatic pressure from the White House, the Austrian Raiffeisen it has already had to renounce a Europe-Russia exchange agreement. The institute already holds the small, now unenviable, record of exposures to Moscow.
The risk for banks that do not adapt and reduce their exposure to Moscow, or at least follow the path by default, is that of seeing a fine imposed by the ECB.
The trouble that Unicredit ended up in arose from a dispute relating to a financing contract, which according to the accusation was not honoured. And relating to the construction of a liquefied gas plant near St. Petersburg entrusted to the German Linde with counterparty RusChemAlliance, joint venture including the public giant Gazprom.
In fact everything stopped following the sanctions, in 2022 an attempt was made (in vain) to terminate the contract and, naturally, the financing banks were unable to proceed. A mess until the seizure sentence dictated by the Court of St. Petersburg.
Read also the testimony of this mechanical company which, after winning a contract, became trapped in the network of sanctions against Russia.
It should also be remembered that Unicredit she was not the only one to suffer a precautionary seizure. On the contrary, even the Germans have already lost out Commerzbank And Deutsche Bank, to which assets worth 200 million were frozen. Among the Italian banks with large interests in Russia, after Piazza Gae Aulenti, there is Intesa Sanpaolo which has been working for some time to reduce its exposure.
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