Czech National Bank imposes temporary ban on European-Russian Bank activity
The Czech national bank imposed a temporary ban on the European-Russian Bank’s (ERB) financial activity. According to the regulation made by the Czech National Bank today, the ERB, which has operated in the Czech Republic since 2008 has temporarily lost its authority to take new deposits and provide credits.
Czech National Bank spokesman Tomáš Zimmermann stated that the Czech National Bank, as the executive body of the Financial Oversight Committee, evaluated the situation of the ERB. After careful consideration it decided to impose a moratorium on certain bank operations in order to avoid irreversible losses during the administrative procedure in case the bank’s financial situation deteriorates.
The ERB may only purchase assets with zero risk with the exception of the assets which are necessary for the proper conduct of the work and with the exception of savings in the banks which have special licenses provided according to the law. This applies to banks in EU member-countries. The payout of bank deposits to account holders is not limited by this decision.
With only about seven billion CZK worth of assets, the European-Russian Bank is far from being a big player on the market. The bank is oriented predominantly towards Czech export financing to Russia. The ERB gained much publicity after providing credit in 2014 to the “National Front,” an extreme-right, French, political party led by Marine Le Pen.
The European-Russian Bank was established in 2008 by the First Czech-Russian Bank LLC Moscow in 2008. According to the BBC, FCRB LLC, which possessed small assets in 2002-2003, was bought by the "Stroytransgaz" company which was then controlled by the families of Viktor Chernomyrdin and Rem Vyakhirev. Stroytransgaz currently belongs to the business interests of Gennady Timchenko, who holds dual citizenship—Russian and Finnish—and has been included in the sanctions list of Europe.