MOSCOW. July 20 (Interfax) - The United States has imposed sanctions blocking five Russian lending organizations, including Tinkoff Bank, LockoBank, and Solidarity Bank, the U.S. Department of Finance said in a statement.
The SDN list also includes Unistream Bank (which operates the Unistream payment system) and the Petersburg Social Commercial Bank.
In addition, the Office of Foreign Assets Control has issued a standard license for such situations permitting transactions with the sanctioned banks until a specific date (October 18).
"Imposing sanctions against additional Russia-based financial institutions further degrades the Russian Federation's ability to maintain access to the global financial system," the U.S. Department of Finance said when commenting on its decision.
The agency said Tinkoff Bank is partially controlled by Vladimir Potanin, who was earlier included in the SDN List.
Tinkoff Bank was sanctioned by the European Union in February 2023 and by the United Kingdom in May.
Tinkoff Bank said its inclusion in the U.S. SDN List "was expected." "We have prepared for such a turn of events, and we will do everything we can to ensure that our clients notice [it] as little as possible. We are now clarifying what effect the sanctions imposed will have," the bank said on its Telegram channel. The bank said all of its products, services and applications are working normally.
Tinkoff Investment, for its part, promised to give further comment as soon as it has fully studied the list of measures that were imposed. "We have prepared for any possible events. Trading is taking place in the standard way today," the broker said.
Yelena Titova and Andrei Golikov were removed from the SDN List on Thursday. They were put on the SDN List in April 2022 for their connections to Otkritie Bank, which blocking sanctions were earlier imposed on (they were members of its supervisory board).
Tinkoff Bank ranked 12th for quantity of assets among Russian banks on the Interfax 100 ranking as of June 1, 2023. LockoBank ranked 52nd, Solidarity ranked 62nd, Petersburg Social Commercial Bank ranked 88th, and Unistream ranked 165th.