Putin's intent appears to be to slow the disposal of Russian assets by western companies. The actual long-term impact of these new rules is not clear. Probably some type of work-around will be found.
Nobody wants defective Russian crap -- which is next to useless on a modern battlefield. Russia is the country which is currently begging Iran and North Korea to send them "modern" drones and equipment.
The U.S. is stepping up to even more quickly to liquidate the assets of all Russian oligarchs via established legal processes. Most of this money will eventually be sent to Ukraine. US turns to new ways to punish Russian oligarchs for the war https://apnews.com/article/russia-u...y-laundering-766fa10695ee7bb20175a474028ee562 WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. has begun an aggressive new push to inflict pain on Russia’s economy and specifically its oligarchs with the intent of thwarting the Kremlin’s invasion of Ukraine. From the Treasury Department to the Justice Department, U.S. officials will focus on efforts to legally liquidate the property of Russian oligarchs, expand financial penalties on those who facilitate the evasion of sanctions, and close loopholes in the law that allow oligarchs to use shell companies to move through the U.S. financial system. Andrew Adams, who heads the KleptoCapture task force, designed to enforce the economic restrictions within the U.S. imposed on Russia and its billionaires, told The Associated Press that the group is prioritizing its efforts to identify those who help Russians evade sanctions and violate export controls. “These illicit procurement networks will continue to take up an ever-increasing amount of our bandwidth,” said Adams, who also serves as acting deputy assistant attorney general. So far, more than $58 billion worth of sanctioned Russians’ assets have been blocked or frozen worldwide, according to a report last week from the Treasury Department. That includes two luxury yachts each worth $300 million in San Diego and Fiji, and six New York and Florida properties worth $75 million owned by sanctioned oligarch Viktor Vekselberg. The U.S. has begun attempts to punish the associates and wealth managers of oligarchs — in Vekselberg’s case, a federal court in New York indicted Vladimir Voronchenko after he helped maintain Vekselberg’s properties. He was charged in February with conspiring to violate and evade U.S. sanctions. The case was coordinated through the KleptoCapture group. “I think it can be quite effective to be sanctioning facilitators,” Adams said, calling them “professional sanctions evasion brokers.” A February study led by Dartmouth University researchers showed that targeting a few key wealth managers would cause far greater damage to Russia than sanctioning oligarchs individually. Other attempts to inflict pain on the Russian economy will come from the efforts to liquidate yachts and other property owned by Russian oligarchs and the Kremlin, turning them into cash to benefit Ukraine. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has long called for Russian assets to be transferred to Ukraine, and former Biden administration official Daleep Singh told the Senate Banking Committee on Feb. 28 that forfeiting Russia’s billions in assets held by the U.S. is “something we ought to pursue.” Singh suggested the U.S. should “use the reserves that we have immobilized at the New York Fed, transfer them to Ukraine and allow them to put them up as collateral to raise money.” He ran the White House’s Russia sanctions program when he was national security adviser for international economics. Adams said the KleptoCapture task force is pursuing efforts to sell Russians’ yachts and other property, despite the legal difficulties of turning property whose owners’ access has been blocked into forfeited assets that the government can take and sell for the benefit of Ukraine. He stressed that the U.S. will operate under the rule of law. “Part of what that means is that we will not take assets that are not fully, totally forfeited through the judicial procedures and begin confiscating them without a legal basis,” Adams said. He added that the task force has had “success in working with Congress and working with folks around the executive branch in obtaining authorization to transfer certain forfeited funds to the State Department.” The Treasury Department said on Thursday that the government is “paving the way” for $5.4 million in seized funds to be sent as foreign assistance to Ukraine. Additionally, strengthening laws that serve as loopholes for sanctions evaders will also be a priority across federal departments, officials say. The Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, under Treasury, is expected to roll out rules to address the use of the U.S. real estate market to launder money, including a requirement on disclosing the true ownership of real estate. Steven Tian, director of research at the Yale Chief Executive Leadership Institute, who tracks companies’ disengagement from Russia, said the new real estate rule is long overdue. “I would point out that it’s not just unique to Russian oligarchs. As you know, the real estate market makes use of shell companies in the United States, period,” Tian said. Erica Hanichak, the government affairs director at the FACT Coalition, a nonprofit that promotes corporate transparency, urged the administration to put the rule forward by late March, when the U.S. co-hosts the second Summit for Democracy with the governments of Costa Rica, Netherlands, South Korea and Zambia. “We’re viewing this as an opportunity for the United States to demonstrate leadership not only in addressing corrupt practices abroad, but looking to our own backyard and addressing the loopholes in our system that facilitate corruption internationally,” she said.
https://oilprice.com/Latest-Energy-...-Revenues-Are-Dwindling-Due-To-Sanctions.html IEA: Russia’s Oil Revenues Are Dwindling Due To Sanctions
So where is Putin going to get the revenue from to fund his war? Russia’s oil revenues fall sharply as the West’s price cap starts to bite, IEA says https://www.cnbc.com/2023/03/15/iea-russia-oil-revenues-fall-as-wests-price-cap-starts-to-bite.html The IEA said Russia’s estimated oil export revenues fell to $11.6 billion last month, down $2.7 billion from January when volumes were significantly higher. “It remains to be seen if there will be sufficient appetite for Russian oil products now that the price cap is in place or if its production will start to fall under the weight of sanctions,” the IEA said. “Revenues are already dwindling,” the energy agency added. The International Energy Agency on Wednesday said Russia’s oil export revenues fell sharply in February, prompted by bans and price caps designed to curtail President Vladimir Putin’s ability to finance the war in Ukraine. The IEA said Russia’s estimated oil export revenues fell to $11.6 billion last month, down $2.7 billion from January when volumes were significantly higher. “It remains to be seen if there will be sufficient appetite for Russian oil products now that the price cap is in place or if its production will start to fall under the weight of sanctions. Revenues are already dwindling,” the group said in its latest oil market report. The energy agency said, citing the Russian finance ministry, that Moscow’s fiscal receipts from oil sales were just 45% of the level from a year earlier. The latest figures come shortly after the IEA said in mid-February that the West’s oil war against Russia appeared to be having the “intended effect” despite surprisingly resilient production and exports in recent months. Ukrainian officials and campaigners have previously called for Western policymakers to ramp up the financial pressure on Russia by targeting its oil revenues in order to help Kyiv prevail. The European Union’s embargo on Russian oil products came into effect on Feb. 5, building on the $60 oil price cap implemented by the Group of Seven major economies on Dec. 5. The latter measure also coincided with a move by the EU and U.K. to impose a ban on the seaborne import of Russian crude oil. Asked on Tuesday whether he was concerned last year that the Russian economy might have collapsed due to international sanctions, Putin said he had been worried but that Russia’s “economic sovereignty” now was a major result. The foundations of Russia’s economic stability were “stronger than anyone thought,” he added. Putin said Russia’s financial system had got stronger and that Western companies that left Russia last year thought the economy would collapse “but it didn’t.”
LOL. That's quite the narrative coming out of the Kremlin. Russia is so cut off from the international financial system that the Kremlin thinks Western sanctions have 'insured' the country against the banking crisis https://finance.yahoo.com/news/russia-cut-off-international-financial-083530273.html
"We are, to a certain extent, insured against the negative impact of the crisis that is now unfolding overseas," Peskov said, per the media outlet. Probably Little Rocket Man will pipe up later and tell us that they too are insulated from any financial activities in the West. I mean, like, really insulated. Russsia. The new Boreal North Korea.
Bye, bye, Russian companies. We don't support companies in terrorist nations. Yandex and 4 other Russian tech firms to be delisted from Nasdaq and NYSE https://techcrunch.com/2023/03/16/y...sted-from-nasdaq-and-nyse/?tpcc=tcplustwitter Five Russia-affiliated internet companies are to be formally delisted from U.S. stock exchanges, a year after trading was halted in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The most prominent of the quintet is Yandex, a 25-year-old tech company often called “The Google of Russia,” owing to its products spanning search, e-commerce, advertising, maps, transportation and more. Yandex first went public on Nasdaq in May, 2011, via a parent holding company called Yandex N.V. that’s registered in the Netherlands. This was followed by a secondary listing on the Moscow Exchange three years later. Yandex had been performing well as a public company, reaching an all-time high in November, 2021, with a market cap of $31 billion. In the months that followed, Yandex’s shares went into freefall as Russia invaded neighboring Ukraine, leading Nasdaq to put a temporary halt on trading in February, 2022. Divesting Many Western companies suspended operations in Russia in early 2022 due to sanctions, while Yandex CEO and founder Arkady Volozh left the company last June after he was included on a list of sanctions issued by the European Union. To protect its remaining interests, Yandex has been divesting some of its properties, including offloading its news service to a rival with close ties to the Russian State. And back in November, Yandex announced plans for a corporate restructuring that would distance itself from its Russian roots through further divestments, while leveraging its existing international presence in areas such as self-driving cars and cloud computing. Yandex also noted that it would likely re-brand its Dutch holding company, though this has yet to come to fruition. However, Yandex wasn’t the only Russian company impacted by geopolitical turmoil. Nasdaq last year halted trading in online recruitment platform HeadHunter; e-commerce player Ozon, which has been called the Amazon of Russia; and Russian fintech Qiwi, which claims an official headquarters in Cyprus. The New York Stock Exchange (NYSE), meanwhile, halted trading in Russian real estate database company Cian, which also is officially based in Cyprus. Yesterday, Nasdaq alerted its four companies that delisting proceedings were underway, with Yandex, HeadHunter, Ozon and Qiwi‘s delisting-day scheduled for March 24. The NYSE also notified Cian, though a date wasn’t provided. Nasdaq’s rules around delisting procedures state that it can do so “…based on any event, condition, or circumstance that exists or occurs that makes initial or continued listing of the securities inadvisable or unwarranted in its opinion, even though the securities meet all enumerated criteria for initial or continued listing on Nasdaq.” However, there is also an official appeals process in place. Companies facing a delisting process can request a hearing from an advisory committee that’s appointed by Nasdaq’s board of directors, and companies wishing to do so have seven days after receiving their delisting notice. At the time of writing, Yandex has said that it will appeal the decision, while Ozon has confirmed that it’s considering filing an appeal. TechCrunch has reached out to the other three companies to ask if they intend to appeal, and will update here when, or if, we hear back.