The National Anti-Terrorist Center, which is part of the Czech police, began an investigation because of the work of the Austrian banking group Raiffeisen Bank International (RBI) in Russia. The press service of the police informed the state channel Česká televize about this.
The check was launched on the complaint of several Czech clients of the bank, members of the Association for the Rights of Citizens and Entrepreneurs (.pdf). They demanded that the Russian subsidiary, Raiffeisenbank, be checked for terrorist financing, since it pays taxes on profits to the Russian budget after the invasion of Ukraine.
In February 2023, the U.S. Department of the Treasury's Sanctions Enforcement Office (OFAC) launched an investigation against Raiffeisen Bank because of business in Russia. Soon, the leadership of the European Central Bank also «put pressure» on the bank to «turn off» the Russian representative office, Reuters claimed, citing sources.
Since the outbreak of war in Ukraine, RBI officials have said they are allowing for a «carefully considered exit» from Russia. At the same time, in 2022, the net profit of Raiffeisenbank in Russia grew 4.3 times — to 2.06 billion euros — compared to 474 million in the previous year. Russian business provided the entire RBI banking group with more than half of their profit for the year, which amounted to 3.8 billion euros.
Raiffeisenbank remains one of the few large banks in Russia that sanctions do not prevent from conducting operations in foreign currency, including including transfers abroad. To limit the number of incoming dollar transfers from other banks, Raiffeisenbank set a 50% commission on them. Starting from September, the minimum amount of such a commission will be raised to $1,000.
The increase in the income of the Russian division in the company's reports was explained by the fact that most of them came from commissions. As a result, Raiffeisenbank has to pay 559 million euros to the Russian budget for 2022 as income tax. As part of the excess profit tax adopted by Russian deputies in June 2023, Raiffeisenbank will pay about another 100 million euros, the Ukrainian authorities have calculated. They put RBI on the list of «international sponsors of the war», which lists companies that did not leave Russia after the invasion of Ukraine.