Raiffeisen Bank International's (RBI) Russian assets manager continues to hold and promote investments in sanctioned Russian companies and government bonds, according to a joint investigation by the BankTrack NGO and the B4Ukraine coalition published on March 12.
As of January, Raiffeisen Capital held around 31.7 billion rubles ($365 million) in shares and bonds in entities sanctioned by the U.S. and the EU for their role in supporting Russian aggression in Ukraine, the report said, citing financial documents.
This sum is only part of the overall value of 70.9 billion ($818 million) rubles reportedly held across 10 funds.
Austria's Raiffeisen banking group has been long scrutinized for failing to exit the Russian market despite the EU sanctions imposed at the outbreak of the full-scale war against Ukraine in 2022.
The investigation highlights that these assets included roughly 2.7 billion rubles ($31 million) in state bonds issued after March 9, 2022, a cut-off date past which the EU banned trade in any transferable securities issued by the Russian government.
The asset manager's other investments reportedly include about 1.6 billion rubles ($18.5 million) worth of shares in the Russian state-owned bank Sberbank and 2.2 billion rubles ($25.4 million) in the state energy giant Gazprom, both under Western sanctions.
Raiffeisen remains the largest Western bank still operating in Russia, despite pleding in July 2024 that it would "drastically" scale down its business in the country.
"We must call these investments what they are: war profiteering with reckless disregard for the Ukrainian people and for European efforts to sanction the Russian war machine," said Max Hammer, a human rights campaigner at BankTrack.
"RBI must address and be made to answer for these violations, and it must provide detailed information on its financial links to the Russian war machine. If it fails to do so, European authorities should not hesitate to respond appropriately."
The authors of the report argue that Raiffeisen Capital's investment activities may contravene European sanctions legislation.
"RBI has previously claimed that its Russian business is subject to rigorous due diligence and sanctions compliance checks, but these due diligence procedures have clearly not been enough to prevent the bank from investing in key sponsors of Russia’s war of aggression," Nezir Sinani, the executive director at B4Ukraine, said in a statement.
"The time for RBI to decisively sever its relationship with Russia’s wartime economy is long overdue."
Raiffeisen Capital has not responded to the Kyiv Independent's request for comment at the time of publication.
Tim Zadorozhnyy
(Updated: )
