UAE banks have begun massively blocking and delaying payments to Russian companies

The United Arab Emirates Bank has sharply increased checks on payments by Russian companies after a new wave of US sanctions, which affected 50 banks, including the Russian state-owned Gazprombank.

This is reported by The Moscow Times.

UAE banks are the main anti-sanctions «hubs» of Russian business abroad, through which export and import settlements are carried out. According to Russian business representatives and lawyers, the situation with payments through the UAE, where over 1,600 Russian companies opened «affiliates» after the full-scale war, deteriorated sharply in November.

According to sources, the average payment time through Dubai banks has increased from 1-3 days at the beginning of the year to two weeks, and in some cases up to 30 days. For a number of companies, money is “frozen” and returned, and sometimes even lost. There are cases when funds were debited from accounts in the UAE at the end of November and have not yet been credited to accounts in Russian banks or back to accounts in the UAE, said lawyer Svetlana Derevenko. According to her, most companies operating through the UAE complain about the “significant deterioration” of the situation.

In a number of areas, UAE credit institutions have stopped conducting transactions altogether: in particular, these are electronics, servers, IT services, industrial equipment, said lawyers from Amond& Smith.

Banks fear secondary sanctions — that is, penalties for violating already imposed restrictions. That's why they have stepped up checks on all companies with Russian beneficiaries or those that work with Russian money. In some cases, accounts have been blocked.

Part of the difficulties are related to Chinese banks, which have stepped up checks on payments from India, the UAE, and Hong Kong, trying to detect a “Russian trace” in them, business representatives told us.

For Russian consumers, what is happening could mean the disappearance of goods from sale. If payment problems are not resolved, then as early as December «there may be a shortage of consumer electronics», warned the founder of the Jacky's brand, Huseyn Imanov.

As Ukrinform reported, as a result of the new US sanctions package, almost all banks from the largest Russian financial institutions by assets have lost access to the global financial system, and some of them have already announced the suspension of currency settlements.