ST. PETERSBURG, July 4. The exchange of blocked assets is voluntary for participants; sanctions on the Moscow Exchange are not a decisive factor for the success of the scheme, said the head of the Bank of Russia, Elvira Nabiullina, speaking at a press conference as part of the Financial Congress.
“We said from the very beginning that we are offering this scheme as a voluntary opportunity, it is voluntary for Russian participants and for foreign participants. For foreign participants it depends on the position of their regulators, therefore, the extent to which this idea will be implemented depends on this. I don’t think that sanctions on the exchange are a key obstacle to various types of exchanges of blocked assets,” she said.
The Russian authorities have developed a scheme for the exchange of frozen assets of citizens: first of all, it is aimed at retail investors, since the value of alienated foreign securities cannot exceed 100 thousand rubles. As the authorities indicated, this is the overwhelming number of investors.
On May 8, Investpalata completed accepting applications for the exchange of frozen assets from Russian investors — they submitted more than 1 million applications for 35.3 billion rubles, the offer pool for non-residents includes 2,570 types of foreign securities. Since June 3, Investpalata has begun accepting applications from non-residents to buy out blocked foreign securities. Applications from non-residents will be accepted until July 5.
In mid-June, the US Treasury Department announced the introduction of a new package of sanctions against Russia, the list of which includes, in particular, the Moscow Exchange and the National Clearing Center (NCC). At the same time, the US Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) issued licenses to curtail operations with the Moscow Exchange, the National Settlement Depository (NSD), and the NCC until August 13. Since June 13, the Moscow Exchange has suspended trading in the US dollar, euro and Hong Kong dollar.