Aksyonov announced the opening of the first office of Sberbank in Crimea

Sberbank announced the start of work in the Crimea in January of this year, at the same time its first ATMs appeared on the peninsula. According to Aksenov,

The first office of Sberbank on the Crimean peninsula will be opened in the center of Simferopol within a few months, then the bank's offices will appear in other cities of Crimea, the HEAD of the region Sergey Aksenov said on his TELEGRAM channel.

“Sberbank office will be opened in the center of Simferopol. The modular structure will be installed within a few months near the musical theater. In the future, bank branches will be opened in Yalta, Evpatoria and other cities of the republic,” he wrote.

After the annexation of Crimea to RUSSIA in 2014, the country's largest bank fell under EU sectoral sanctions , but not under the most severe blocking restrictions. Due to fears of new sanctions, Sberbank did not open offices in Crimea for a long time, but the situation changed after the start of a military special operation in Ukraine on February 24, 2022. On the same day, Washington added Sberbank to the CAPTA sanctions list, which implies restrictions on correspondent accounts in the United States , and already in April it came under the most severe blocking restrictions, which imply a complete disconnection from the DOLLAR system.

The bank emphasized that the sanctions would not have a significant impact on its work and would not affect the service to Russians in any way, however, due to restrictive measures, Sber actually lost its European business - assets in Austria, Germany, the Czech Republic, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Hungary , Serbia and Slovenia.

President Vladimir Putin last March said that after the imposition of sanctions, all Russian companies and banks would be able to operate in Crimea. “Now there are all conditions for large Russian business structures, which, frankly, used to be afraid of some kind of sanctions… Now they [business] have nothing to fear,” he said. “Now they can safely come, including, by the way, banks, to the peninsula and actively work in the region.”

In January of this year, the first Sberbank ATMs appeared in Crimea, and in March the bank launched acquiring for stores on the peninsula, RBC wrote.

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