National Reserve Bank (NRB) has been temporarily halted from accepting private deposits upon the investigation conducted by the Bank of Russia (CBR), ’Kommersant’ reports accordingly to the newspaper’s sources. This measure is not the most severe one implemented by the Bank of Russia, and it would not undermine NRB dramatically, as the bank’s client base shrunk significantly as of early 2012, experts say.
On July 13, first deputy CBR chairman Alexey Simanovsky confirmed that certain sanctions were imposed on behalf of National Reserve Bank. He noted, however, that the financial institution was not banned from acceptance of private deposits. On July 13, Interfax reported with references to the unknown sources that NRB allegedly stopped accepting private deposits. ’CBR is implementing control measures of the National Reserve Bank, but it has not been banned from accepting private depoisits’, Interfax quoted Simanovsky later that day. Simanovsky did not give any detailed information on the nature of said ’control measures’. According to two sources in common with the inside situation within NRB, those measures might involve restrictive measures on private deposits acceptance.
The reason to implement those restrictive measures might have been not only the limitations discovered during the investigation, but NRB’s reluctance to fix those limitations, newspaper says. The main issue is that the financial institution did not submit to the investigation results and attempted to litigate those results. ’It was shortsighted of Lebedev to not to admit the investigators’ findings. He should have assessed the reserves required by CBR and hit the court afterwards. If he won the case, he could have disband the reserves, and if he lost, he could have secured himself from the regulator’s sanctions’, the source close to NRB reasoned.
’Kommersant’ did not get any commentary from Mr. Lebedev, as he would not answer his cell phone.
