European Union representatives agreed to remove seven Russian banks from the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (Swift), the Belgium-based global financial messaging service, Bloomberg reported Tuesday, citing anonymous sources.
The banks are VTB Bank, Bank Otkritie, Novikombank, Sovcombank, Promsvyazbank, Bank Rossiya and VEB, the sources told the wire service. The U.S. had already placed blocking sanctions against the first four of those banks. The U.S. move ordered assets tied to VTB, for example, that are held in U.S. financial institutions to be instantly frozen and inaccessible to the Kremlin as of last Thursday, in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
