The EBA has designed an efficient framework for reporting of deposits subject to Russian and Belarusian economic sanctions

• To assist the European Commission, the EBA has designed a template for the reporting of deposits falling under the economic sanctions against Russia and Belarus.
• The template can be used on a voluntary basis by the relevant national competent authorities and by the Commission.
• While this template is not part of the EBA supervisory reporting framework, it is built on the EU common reporting approach and concepts familiar to the EU credit institutions.

Following the request from the EU Commission, the European Banking Authority (EBA) has developed a template for the annual reporting of information on deposits subject to the Russia and the Belarus Economic Sanctions Regulations. The EBA is making the template available for voluntary use by the relevant national competent authorities and by the EU Commission, with the aim to promote a convergent approach and to reduce any associated reporting costs, especially for cross-border banks.

When developing this template, the EBA has leveraged on its long-term expertise in building a common European supervisory reporting framework as well as on the reporting approach and concepts that are familiar to the EU credit institutions.

The EBA is making this template available for use by the relevant competent authorities that are responsible in each Member State for the monitoring of the application of the sanctions by the EU credit institutions, and by the EU Commission.

It should be noted that this template is not part of the EBA reporting framework and will not be supported by any formal tools or legal documents. In addition, the EBA will not be part of any data collections and will not provide a technical package for the template and reporting process.

Queries and further instructions

It is the responsibility of the EU Commission to provide clarity and answer queries on the scope and implementation of the adopted restrictive measures and the associated reporting requirements. The EBA is supporting the European Commission in collecting and filtering such queries. Queries from competent authorities and credit institutions can be sent to eba.sanctions.qa@eba.europa.eu. The EBA will not provide any further instructions or clarifications to these reporting requirements

Background

Article 5b Regulation (EU) No 833/2014 (Russia Economic Sanction Regulation – ‘RSR’) and Article 1u of Council Regulation (EC) 756/2006 (Belarus Sanction Regulation - BSR) prohibit EU credit institutions to accept any deposits from Russian or Belarussian nationals or natural persons residing in Russia or Belarus, or legal persons, entities or bodies established in Russia or Belarus, if the total value of deposits of the natural or legal person, entity or body per credit institution exceeds EUR 100,000. Both RSR and BSR envisage various exemptions and derogations that the competent authorities responsible for the monitoring of the sanctions may authorise having determined that the acceptance of such a deposit is compliant with the provisions specified in RSR and BSR articles allowing exemptions and derogations.

Article 5g of RSR and Article 1z BSR establish reporting obligations for credit institutions, which are required to supply to the national competent authority of the Member State where they are located or to the Commission the following information:

1. a list of deposits (as defined in RSR and BSR ) exceeding EUR 100 000 held by Russian or Belarusian nationals or natural persons residing in Russia or Belarus, or by legal persons, entities or bodies established in Russia or Belarus;
2. information on deposits exceeding EUR 100,000 held by Russian or Belarusian nationals or natural persons residing in Russia or Belarus who have acquired the citizenship of a Member State or residence rights in a Member State through an investor citizenship scheme or an investor residence scheme.

The information set out under (i) shall be provided no later than 27 May 2022, 26 February 2022 in the case of the RSR and 10 March 2022 in the case of the BSR as the reference dates for the first reporting. Credit institutions shall provide updates regarding the amounts of such deposits every 12 months.

Whilst there is no deadline, the information specified under (ii) above  shall be provided as soon as possible. This means that credit institutions should take proper action to swiftly collect the information. The deadline of 27 May 2022 envisaged in Article 5g(1)(a) of RSR and Article 1z(a) of BSR provides, by analogy, a reasonable timeframe for the transmission of this information as well.

The EBA has developed and made available for the use by the relevant competent authorities and by the Commission the reporting template and associated instructions to facilitate the discharge of the reporting obligation under Article 5g of RSR and Article 1z BSR.