Sberbank blocked transfers to the Tinkoff card of the human rights organization Solidarity Zone, which supports political prisoners convicted, including under terrorist articles. The cards of those who donated to human rights activists were also blocked. Ivan Astashin, one of the participants in the Solidarity Zone, told The Insider:
“Yesterday, simultaneously with the news about the blocking of the cards of people who raised funds to help refugees from Ukraine who ended up in Russia, several subscribers wrote to us that they were blocking transfers from their Sberbank cards to our Tinkoff card. We immediately wrote to Tinkoff to find out the reason, but Tinkoff replied that everything was fine with the card. It was Sberbank that blocked transfers from their cards. Yesterday we wrote a post that we are stopping accepting donations so that people don’t donate to this card yet. It was not clear what this was connected with and what it could lead to, and already this morning, people who had blocked transfers from Sberbank cards reported that Sberbank completely blocked their cards. First of all, it turns out that the blocking affected those who donated. Our Tinkoff card is fully functional.
This afternoon we learned that we blocked Sberbank cards, for which we had personal fees for lawyers for Vladimir Zolotarev and Ilya Baburin, whom we provide assistance. We assume that this is due to the fact that the card holder is the same as the Tinkoff card, to which transfers were blocked yesterday.
It is likely that Sberbank is compiling some kind of black lists, where the holder of these our cards, about which I spoke, got. Sberbank, for its part, blocked the holder's cards and blocked transfers to her from cards of other banks. Other banks have not yet taken any action.
Yesterday, Sberbank did not give any reasons to our subscribers and today to us ourselves and only refers to federal law No. 115 on combating money laundering and the financing of terrorism. If it really was according to Federal Law No. 115, then Rosfinmonitoring would take measures, i.e. financial banking regulator. In such cases, the banking system works as one, i.e. not only Sberbank cards, but all banks would be blocked. This is not to mention the fact that there are no grounds for actions under Federal Law No. 115. Everything is transparent with us – we collect funds for lawyers and for parcels for prisoners. Donations come to us and we transfer funds either to lawyers or to volunteers who make parcels. Or we transfer funds to the accounts of prisoners. This activity is not yet prohibited in Russia.
It is obvious that this is all the arbitrariness of Sberbank. It is unlikely that he himself initiated all this. It is possible that some signals were received from the security forces, but we consider this to be pressure on human rights and society as a whole. Here, first of all, a blow to those who donate. This is intimidation of people, so we urge to master cryptocurrencies and support us and other human rights and humanitarian initiatives in cryptocurrencies. We have a memo on how to do this easily and safely, and there are details. We ask you to support us in alternative ways, for example, to a European bank card, PayPal and crypto wallets.”
Now the Solidarity Zone is asking for support through cryptocurrencies.
Earlier, St. Petersburg journalist Galina Artemenko, who has been helping refugees from Ukraine for the second year, reported on blocking her account. Boris Vishnevsky, deputy of the St. Petersburg legislature, also said that Sberbank blocked the accounts of priest Grigory Mikhnov-Vaitenko, volunteer Yegor Zakharov and other people with an anti-war position. They all collected donations to help refugees.
Galina Artemenko said that she applied to Sberbank with a request to unblock the accounts, but they answered that she was "engaged in collections for dubious purposes." “Yes, I bought medicines, food, things for refugees from Ukraine. This is my second year doing this. These, of course, are “dubious goals” for you,” the journalist wrote.
Deputy Boris Vishnevsky said that he contacted the leadership of the St. Petersburg "Sberbank" and vouched for the activists. They replied that the accounts were allegedly blocked by an automatic program that considered many transfers to one card suspicious.
The Insider sent a request to Sberbank about blocking the accounts of volunteers and human rights activists, but has not yet received a response.