MOSCOW (Reuters) – As the threat of secondary sanctions deters Chinese banks from facilitating trade with Russia, companies are flocking to the one Russian bank with a Chinese branch and facing up to six months of delays, five people familiar with the matter said.
Russia’s largest banks rushed to open accounts in China following sweeping sanctions imposed by the United States and other Western nations on Russia’s financial system after Moscow sent its army into Ukraine in February 2022. By the end of that year, 90% of Russian banks had yuan accounts in Chinese banks.
Reuters reported last month that Russian oil firms are facing delays of up to several months to be paid for crude and fuel exports as banks in China, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) become more wary of U.S. secondary sanctions.
That sanctions risk has left companies seeking alternative payment routes and led to a bottleneck at VTB Bank’s Shanghai branch, the…
