US Treasury Stands Against Sanctioning Russian Sovereign Debt

00:44 GMT, 12 April 2018

CC BY 2.0 / Roman Boed / The US Treasury Department

WASHINGTON (Sputnik) - The US Treasury Department is opposed to imposing sanctions on the Russian government debt as it can have a destabilizing effect on global markets, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin told reporters on Wednesday.

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When asked whether he continues to stand by the Treasury report advising against sanctions on the Russian sovereign debt, Mnuchin said, "I do," as quoted by Bloomberg.

"I’m not going to comment on what we’re going to do going forward and what we’re not going to do going forward," the secretary added.

Earlier in April, US lawmakers Joaquin Castro and Mike Turner introduced a bill that would prohibit American citizens to engage in transactions related to the Russian sovereign debt and impose sanctions on Russia’s financial institutions, including Sberbank, VTB Bank, Gazprombank, Bank of Moscow, Rosselkhozbank, Promsvyazbank, Vnesheconombank.

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The bill was introduced in response to the Salisbury incident and would sanction any person who was knowingly engaged in the Skripals’ poisoning in the UK, as well as Russian government employees who "materially assisted, worked on behalf of, or acted as an agent or instrumentality of the Russian Government in the murder, attempted murder, or assault committed outside of Russia against any expatriate, dissident, or foreign national."

The United Kingdom is accusing Russia of having organized an attack on former double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia with the help of the A234 nerve agent. Moscow has strongly rejected all the allegations of its involvement.