EU Clarifies Crypto is Covered in Sanctions Against Russia, Belarus

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The Euro­pean Union made it clear that cryp­tocur­ren­cies, which fall into the cat­e­go­ry “trans­fer­able assets,” are includ­ed in the finan­cial sanc­tions imposed on Rus­sia for its inva­sion of Ukraine. Addi­tion­al­ly, the EU imple­ment­ed sim­i­lar penal­ties on Belarus for assist­ing the Russ­ian war-like regime.

The Bloc Extends Its Sanctions

Sim­i­lar to the USA, the Euro­pean Union vowed not to deploy mil­i­tary troops to Ukraine and, as of the moment, stands away from a direct con­flict with Rus­sia. Nev­er­the­less, the orga­ni­za­tion slammed the largest coun­try by land­mass with severe mon­e­tary sanc­tions aim­ing to lessen its pow­er and cut its finan­cial con­nec­tion with the rest of the world.

Such penal­ties includ­ed freez­ing the assets of giant Russ­ian banks and expelling cer­tain insti­tu­tions from the major pay­ment sys­tem SWIFT.

Accord­ing to a recent announce­ment, the EU expand­ed its mea­sures against Rus­sia by tar­get­ing 160 local oli­garchs who might be part of Putin’s inner cir­cle. Specif­i­cal­ly, those indi­vid­u­als were banned from trad­ing dig­i­tal assets in the EU.

“The EU con­firmed the com­mon under­stand­ing that loans and cred­it can be pro­vid­ed by any means, includ­ing cryp­to assets, as well as fur­ther clar­i­fied the notion of ‘trans­fer­able secu­ri­ties,’ so as to clear­ly include cryp­to-assets, and thus ensure the prop­er imple­men­ta­tion of the restric­tions in place,” the orga­ni­za­tion added in its statement.

Not sur­pris­ing­ly, the EU extend­ed its sanc­tions to Belarus, too. The East­ern Euro­pean coun­try has aid­ed the Russ­ian “spe­cial mil­i­tary oper­a­tion,” and for that rea­son, many local banks were expelled from SWIFT. In addi­tion, EU cen­tral secu­ri­ties depos­i­to­ries will no longer accept trans­fer deposits exceed­ing €100,000 made by Belaruss­ian nationals.

Sberbank’s Departure From The European Market

As a result of the sanc­tions, Russia’s biggest bank – Sber­bank – announced it will with­draw from the Euro­pean market.

After imple­ment­ing the mea­sures, the insti­tu­tion, which had oper­a­tions in Aus­tria, Ger­many, Croa­t­ia, Hun­gary, and many oth­ers, faced large cash out­flows. Sber­bank even said that the safe­ty of its employ­ees was threat­ened, mak­ing it one of the rea­sons to shut its doors in those countries.

Inter­est­ing­ly, the enti­ty is one of the few Russ­ian banks with a pro-cryp­to stance. Not long ago, it cre­at­ed a blockchain exchange-trad­ed fund (ETF) track­ing promi­nent com­pa­nies in the cryp­tocur­ren­cy indus­try, such as Coin­base and Galaxy Dig­i­tal. This became the first such prod­uct in Rus­sia, enabling traders to delve into the dig­i­tal asset sec­tor with­out pur­chas­ing, stor­ing, or sell­ing tokens.

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