Turkish banks are widely blocking payments from Russians in Europe – media

Turkish banks began to strongly refuse Russian companies to pay in the European Union and other countries. The Moscow Times wrote this on Wednesday, September 18.

Sources from importers and intermediaries said that European banks gradually began to refuse to accept payments for goods from suppliers representing Russian enterprises, said one of the importers. In particular, when trying to pay for goods through Turkey, a supplier from Bulgaria asked him to transfer money through a publicly accessible country.

Increased attention from European credit institutions led to the refusal of Turkish banks to pay transit since the beginning of September. Even providing the bank with additional delivery documents will not solve the problem.

There are usually two or three banks in Turkey willing to process payments for Russian goods in other countries, but recently the job has become more difficult even for them. In most cases, difficulties arise when paying in dollars and euros, but now payments in yuan are also difficult.

At the same time, the Turkish state bank Emlak Katılım, which formally does not carry out transit payments, introduced an additional commission for them against the background of the refusal of other credit institutions from such operations.

Experts believe that the reason may be that Turkish banks have become more wary of sanctions or that their correspondent banks are now placing higher demands on payments from Turkey.

Let’s recall that the situation with payments from Russia to “friendly” countries worsened significantly in December 2023, when US President Joe Biden signed a decree allowing the US Treasury to impose secondary sanctions against those third country bank for assisting authorized persons. After that, banks in Turkey, China, UAE and other countries began to refuse to accept payments from Russia.