Raiffeisen Bank International, UniCredit, ING, Commerzbank, Deutsche Bank, Intesa Sanpaolo and OTP reported that their combined profits in 2023 amounted to more than 3 billion euros, which is three times more than in 2021, the report said. More than half of tax payments in 2023 correspond to Austria’s Raiffeisen Bank International, the report read.
The report noted that the payment of taxes by European banks is an example of how foreign companies remaining in Russia help the country maintain financial stability, despite a large-scale sanctions campaign against Moscow.
At the same time, foreign creditors benefited not only from the increased interest rate, but also from sanctions against Russian banks, as they lost access to international payment systems, which increased the attractiveness of Western banks for clients in Russia, the newspaper reported.