EU Commits To Remove Selected Russian Banks From SWIFT System
The leaders of European Union (EU) and a group countries have decided to isolate Russia from the international financial system.
The measures will include blocking some Russian banks from the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT), the messaging network underpinning global financial transactions.
Blocking Russia from SWIFT, the EU would disallow Russian institutions from conducting any interbank transactions with non-Russian entities, effectively blocking it from the global financial system. The move comes days after Russian military forces launched a military operation in Donbass area.
The Belgium-headquartered Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication, or SWIFT, is a messaging network for payment orders that connects 11,000 financial institutions in over 200 countries and territories, and exchanges an average of over 32 million messages per day. According Al Jazeera, over 300 financial institutions in Russia are connected to SWIFT.
The European Commission issued a formal statement this support later Saturday in which it said that the EC, France, Germany, Italy, UK, Canada and U.S. stand behind the decision.
According to the statement:
“We commit to ensuring that selected Russian banks are removed from the SWIFT messaging system. This will ensure that these banks are disconnected from the international financial system and harm their ability to operate globally.”
As a part of a four-step commitment plan, the EC also committed to block the Russian Central Bank from using its international reserves and preventing wealthy Russian individuals from buying passports in other nations to reenter the global financial system.
In addition, the statement detailed that the EC also plan to launch a “transatlantic task force” to implement sanctions enacted by the EU, U.S., UK, Japan, Canada, South Korea and several other groups “by identifying and freezing the assets of sanctioned individuals and companies that exist within our jurisdictions.”
As SWIFT is based in Belgium, support across the European bloc was crucial in order to block a country from it.
