MOSCOW, August 2 It is possible that the US Treasury Department may once again extend permission for transactions with the Moscow Exchange and its subsidiaries after October 12, since a large number of American investors do not have time to comply with the regulator's requirements and are asking for an extension of the term, a lawyer at the Moscow Exchange commented. bureau «Nektorov, Savelyev and Partners» (NSP) Gleb Boyko.
Earlier on Friday, the US Treasury Department announced that it was extending permission for operations with the Moscow Exchange, the National Clearing Centre (NCC), and the National Settlement Depository (NSD) until October 12. The license applies to operations with the Moscow Exchange, NCC, NSD, and their subsidiaries. 
On June 12, the US Treasury Department introduced a new package of sanctions against Russia, the list of which included, in particular, the Moscow Exchange, the National Settlement Depository (NSD), and the National Clearing House (NCC). The US Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) had previously set the deadline for winding down operations with the Moscow Exchange, the National Settlement Depository (NSD), and the National Clearing House (NCC) as August 13.
The lawyer linked the extension of the general license to the fact that large non-Russian institutional investors did not have time to terminate their legal relations with the Moscow Exchange and its structures, including withdrawing their clients' securities. «For example, not all American depository banks of depository receipt programs for Russian shares managed to exit depository agreements and transfer their rights and obligations to other depository banks,» he explains. 
In addition, OFAC could have encountered a large number of requests from investors who began to try to obtain an individual license, without hoping to have time to use the general license valid until August 13. This is typical for those who are trying to unblock assets blocked in the NSD account in the Belgian depository Euroclear, explains Boyko.
«I believe that another extension is possible. The fact is that the sanctions on the Moscow Exchange affect a huge number of people, including institutional investors from the United States, as well as millions of people with blocked assets in Euroclear. OFAC will not be able to cope with such a flow of applications, given its already high workload,» the lawyer says.