11:41 - 13.06.2023
June 13, Fineko/abc.az. A third of banks and other financial institutions in the Netherlands cannot track and freeze the assets of Russian individuals under sanctions.
ABC.AZ reports that the Central Bank of the Netherlands came to this conclusion after an investigation.
The regulator checked 31 financial institutions. According to the Central Bank, a third of them could not find all the bank accounts and assets of the sanctioned persons. The representative of the regulator, Martin Gelderman, informed that when it comes to operations that are easy to establish, about 95% are detected.
In more complex situations, not all banks cope with the task. This also occurs including because of the spelling of surnames. So, as Gelderman draws attention, the surname of Russian President Vladimir Putin is written in English as Putin, and in Dutch - Poetin.
Lawyer Helen Over de Linden, who is working on a dissertation on sanctions, drew attention to the same problem.
"These are truly kindergarten mistakes. In the sanctions lists, the name and surname of the person who is sanctioned are often written in English, Dutch, Russian, Ukrainian, and also, perhaps, in some other way if something went wrong," she said.
The Netherlands has frozen Russian assets worth 644.5 million euro. In general, European countries have frozen 200 bn euro of assets of the Central Bank of the Russian Federation and 24 bn euro of private funds of sanctioned persons.
