The US has prepared a new package of sanctions against Russia in response to the mobilization and annexation of the occupied territories of Ukraine, which is expected to be formalized in the coming week.
How reports The Wall Street Journal citing sources familiar with the plans of the Joe Biden administration, the key structures of the Moscow Exchange — the National Settlement Depository (NSD) and the National Clearing Center (NCC) — will be blacklisted.
NSD, Russia’s main securities depository, has been under European sanctions since early June, and its head, Viktor Zhidkov, has been blacklisted by the United States. The NCC, which clears exchange trades, has so far avoided sanctions.
Blocking measures against the NCC will lead to a de facto halt of exchange trading in the dollar in Russia: the Moscow Exchange will become the place of circulation of the currencies of countries that have not imposed sanctions, explains the head of one of the major brokers.
“Settlements will be only in rubles, all stories with settlements in dollars will have to be stopped,” he says (citations from Forbes).
Also on the list of US sanctions is the Mir national payment system, which Turkish banks, as well as a number of credit organizations in Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Vietnam, have already refused to use under the threat of secondary measures.
In addition, the Deposit Insurance Agency, which guarantees the safety of money that individuals keep in their accounts, and Russian banks, which are threatened with a new wave of disconnections from SWIFT, may be subject to sanctions.
As for the sanctions against the NCC, which will be followed by a halt in exchange trading in the dollar, the Central Bank has been preparing for such a scenario for a long time, the director of the department said on Wednesday financial stability regulator Elizaveta Danilova.
“NCC also has plans, we have plans, banks have plans on how to act in this situation. If dollar settlements are not possible on the stock exchange, we have our own plans for this case, how to calculate the rate,” she explained.
According to sources ForbesThose who are familiar with the results of the plans of the Central Bank, in the event of a halt in exchange trading, the dollar rate will be calculated on the basis of transactions of the largest credit institutions.
To do this, it was decided to create a Russian analogue of Bloomberg – an over-the-counter platform to which the largest banks will provide their quotes. The rate will be determined based on the quotes of the 10 largest banks, however, the algorithm for determining the rate is still being developed.