One of the largest banks in the United Arab Emirates, Emirates NBD, is going to transfer the Russians' money to separate accounts, where all payments on securities, as well as money from their sale, will be received. In this case, it will be impossible to withdraw funds from these accounts. Forbes writes about this with reference to letters that Russian clients of the bank began to receive.
These letters state that if clients are not residents of the EU, one of the countries of the European Economic Area or Switzerland, their assets will be transferred to a separate segregated account. Emirates NBD explained their actions by the requirements of the Western depository.
As a banker familiar with the situation explained to Forbes, a bank in the UAE uses the services of Clearstream and Euroclear depositories and is obliged to comply with their requirements. According to the interlocutor of the publication, due to sanctions, Russian investors massively transferred their assets from Europe to Emirates NBD. “What the bank said means that Russian clients of ENBD will no longer receive any payments on their portfolios – no sales proceeds, no dividends, no coupons,” the banker concluded.
European depositories Euroclear and Clearstream stopped all transactions on the account of the Russian National Settlement Depository (NSD) after the start of a full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine. The EU and Switzerland then imposed sanctions on PDR.
