British bank HSBC will stop making cross-border payments for corporate clients in Russia and Belarus on October 27.
The UK’s largest financial group, which includes Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Bank, has so far maintained a payment channel between Russia and Hong Kong.
This was reported by The Moscow Times.
In the summer, U.S. officials persuaded representatives of Hong Kong’s financial sector to help stop the export of sanctioned U.S. technology products to Russia. Hong Kong has become a major center of parallel imports for Russia, through which microelectronics, chips, and other goods, including military goods, are shipped.
HSBC informed its corporate clients about the suspension of payments related to Russia and Belarus in August and explained it as a “complication of the situation”.
A top manager who works with companies in Russia believes that a complete ban on payments is excessive, as some commercial transactions are not subject to Western sanctions. “This will only force Russian companies to go elsewhere,” he said, “and will further damage Hong Kong’s attractiveness as a global business center.
An earlier investigation by Nikkei showed that after the outbreak of the war in Ukraine and the imposition of Western sanctions, dummy companies began to appear in Hong Kong and China, setting up re-exports of semiconductors to Russia. The supplies include expensive chips, including those made by American manufacturers Intel, Advanced Micro Devices, Texas Instruments and others, which are used in military equipment.
