The largest bank of Cyprus left the market of the Russian Federation

The largest bank of Cyprus, Bank of Cyprus, closed representative offices in Moscow and St. Petersburg, finally leaving the Russian market, reports The Moscow Times.

Since the closure of representative offices, the bank stops accreditation of its branches in the country. Since the beginning of 2024, this is the third representative office of a foreign bank, which has closed in Russia. Their total number in the country has decreased to 23, the report said.

At the beginning of 2022, there were 37 foreign credit organizations in the register of accredited representative offices. After the start of the war, 15 of them closed in Ukraine: nine in 2022, three in 2023 and three more since the beginning of 2024. During this period, only one new representative office was opened - the Kyrgyz "Ayil Bank".

Representations of foreign banks in Russia do not have the right to carry out banking operations, including opening accounts, attracting customer funds, transfers and foreign exchange operations. They act as separate units representing the interests of a credit institution, but are not independent legal entities.

Leaving the Russian market is associated with sanctions, an outflow of foreign business and reduction in trade, experts say. The Raiffeisenbank International data, represented by Bloomberg, indicate that by the end of 2023, the assets of foreign credit organizations in Russia were halved from 2021 and four times from 2021 to $ 66 billion.