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G7 To Ban Investments In Russia As Sanctions Top 8,000
Russia was already the most sanctioned nation on the planet. As of Wednesday, it'll extend its lead
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H – In your earlier post today on sanctions, you mentioned Severstal’s inability to service its debt due to Citi’s reluctance to approve the payments. It’s a perfect example of the multiplier effect of the sanctions, which seem to be complex and require judgement calls by bankers. No one wants to be the person who signed off on a payment that triggers an OFAC fine (not career enhancing!) OFAC rarely offers guidance, so the default becomes to do nothing.
Iraqi sanctions in the 1990 -2003 period were pretty straight forward – there were only a few entities with foreign accounts and they were all frozen. From the outside, these look like an administrative nightmare, which means that banks will err on the side of caution.