Russian banks have been removed from SWIFT network.
Gatekeepers News reports that the US and its Western allies have announced a new raft of crippling sanctions on Moscow, as they promised to ban key Russian banks from the international SWIFT banking network and impose restrictions on the Russian Central Bank.
A senior Biden administration official says they will also set up a transatlantic task force to go after sanctioned oligarchs, “their yachts, luxury apartments, their money and their ability to send their kids to fancy colleges in the West.”
The US officials further said the steps were designed to send the ruble into ‘free fall’ and trigger soaring inflation in the Russian economy.
Ukraine will welcome this development as Russia’s finance will suffer for this as Russian banks will be cut off the system and this will stop them from conducting most of their financial transactions worldwide and effectively block Russian exports and imports.
President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, said it would prevent Putin from using his ‘war chest.’
The US, European Commission, France, Germany, Italy, the United Kingdom, and Canada in a joint statement said, ‘We will hold Russia to account and collectively ensure that this war is a strategic failure for Putin.’
“A raft of measures will be implemented in the coming days,” they said.
They continued, “First, we commit to ensuring that selected Russian banks are removed from the SWIFT messaging system. This will ensure that these banks are disconnected from the international financial system and harm their ability to operate globally.
“Second, we commit to imposing restrictive measures that will prevent the Russian Central Bank from deploying its international reserves in ways that undermine the impact of our sanctions.”
A senior administration official in Washington said the governments were following the ‘Iran model’ of cutting off Moscow’s banks.
“This coming week, we will launch a multilateral transatlantic task force to identify, hunt down and freeze the assets of sanctioned Russian companies, oligarchs, their yachts and their mansions, and any ill-gotten gains that we can find and freeze under the law,” he said.
