Sanctions frightened China: a key bank of China has decided not to work with customers from

The first problems with Chouzhou Commercial Bank's Chinese Bank began in Russian clients in early February, and now all operations were banned. Following the Turkish banks, which in early February began to refuse to work with Russian citizens through fear of getting under secondary sanctions, Russian suppliers had problems with financial transactions in China.

According to the Vedomosti newspaper with reference to its own sources, a key for importers from the Russian Federation of China Chouzhou Commercial Bank has stopped agreements with Russian and Belarusian organizations. The Bank was the main institution in which Russian importers could make calculations.

Chouzhou offered the soft conditions of compliance, and the financial institution has a convenient geographical location-its headquarters is located in the city of II, one of the main logistics units of Chinese exports to Russia, also called the "world supermarket". Problems with calculations in Chinese banks have intensified since the end of 2023, when the US was warned about the risks of repeated sanctions.

The bank then told customers that it would block agreements with any Russian or Belarusian organizations. The first blocks began last week, causing the transactions to break. "Stopping of calculations, given that the Chinese New Year is almost coming, it means that logistics collapse is almost inevitable - it will not be possible to take out the product at least by March over a long weekend, which will start from February 10 and last until the 17th," - reads in publications.

Another interlocutor of the newspaper, an entrepreneur from Izhevskaya, who purchases equipment for machines in China, said that in December he received a message from Chouzhou in December with a warning about stopping payments on a certain list of goods. These goods, as noted by the interlocutor, are under Western sanctions, so they cannot be imported into the territory of the Russian Federation.

At the same time, as the entrepreneur noted, in a few weeks the bank manager announced the complete termination of payments with Russia, regardless of production or payment currency. "Transaction has been stopped not only with SWIFT, but also with its Russian counterpart or Chinese CIPS," journalists write. Turkish banks do not want to serve those clients whose cooperation began after a full -scale invasion of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation into the territory of Ukraine in 2022.

According to Iskander Mirgalimov's financial advisor, banks do not serve corporate clients "with Russian roots", according to him, this applies to oil and gas traders and those who used Turkey as transit jurisdiction for deliveries and certain calculations. It should be noted that in December 2023, US President Joe Baiden's decree on secondary sanctions appeared, which worsened the situation for Russian banks.