One of the largest banks in the UAE has started blocking investment accounts of Russians

One of the largest banks in the United Arab Emirates, Emirates NBD, is going to transfer Russians' money to separate accounts where all payments on securities and money from their sale will be received. It will be impossible to withdraw funds from these accounts.

Source. Forbes writes about this with reference to letters that Russian clients of the bank began to receive.

These letters state that if the clients are not residents of the EU, one of the Eurozone countries or Switzerland, their assets will be transferred to a segregated account. Emirates NBD explained its actions by the requirements of a Western depository (securities market participants).

As a banker familiar with the situation explained to Forbes, the UAE bank uses the services of Clearstream and Euroclear depositories and is obliged to comply with their requirements. According to the source, due to the sanctions, Russian investors have been massively transferring their assets from Europe to Emirates NBD.

"What the bank has announced means that ENBD's Russian clients will no longer receive any payments on their portfolios – no sales proceeds, no dividends, no coupons," the banker said.

The European depositories Euroclear and Clearstream stopped all operations on the account of the Russian National Settlement Depository (NSD) after the start of the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine. The EU and Switzerland then imposed sanctions on NSD.

Background. Meanwhile, it became known that banks in Armenia will start blocking transfers of Russians due to sanctions.

Also recently, Liberty, the third largest bank in Georgia, closed the accounts of several Russian citizens without explanation.