In her first interview in almost two years, the malaysia telegram data head of the Bank of Russia, Elvira Nabiullina, told RBC about the most painful sanctions, the delay in starting to raise the key rate, and whether preferential mortgages will become exotic in the future.
—The financial sector was essentially
the first to take the brunt of the sanctions. The largest banks were under blocking sanctions, reserves were frozen, currency restrictions were impos, disconnection from SWIFT — what was the most unexpect and the most difficult for you?
— We have been living under sanctions since
2014. Therefore, we have always assess the risk of sanctions strengthening and work in all areas, including stress tests with a large number of evaluate both carefully financial institutions. Therefore, for example, large banks, when they fell under sanctions, were already largely prepar for this to happen. Disconnection from SWIFT — the threat was already there since 2014, so we built a national payment infrastructure. We diversifi reserves and increas the share of yuan and gold. The problem, yes, the problem, was international payments, they are still a problem, although we are trying to solve it. Of course, a very painful topic was the america email blocking and freezing of assets of individuals — millions of people who were not subject to sanctions, but found themselves with frozen assets. This is a difficult problem that we are trying to solve in different ways together with the government.