Early March 2022, the ECB decided to close down Sberbank Europe AG, a subsidiary of state-owned Russian Sberbank, with its headquarters in Vienna, Austria. In total, the deposit guarantee scheme in Austria expects to pay out a total of EUR 947 million. Amid the Western sanctions against Russia's financial industry, the Central Bank of Russia (CBR) has granted Sberbank a license to issue and exchange digital assets. Crypto may be the last resort for the Russian financial industry.
The Austrian Financial Market Authority (FMA) on the instructions of the European Central Bank (ECB) issued a decision prohibiting the licensed credit institution Sberbank Europe AG. The regulator has appointed a Government Commissioner to supervise the liquidation of the bank. Sberbank Europe AG, s subsidiary of the Russian state-owned Sberbank in Moscow, is a significant institution in the European Single Supervisory Mechanism (SSM) and is directly supervised by the ECB.
The European headquarters of the state-owned Russian Sberbank is located in Austria. The European Central Bank ECB warned that Sberbank Europe is likely to fail because of economic difficulties. Therefore, the Austrian FMA, as the national resolution authority, on behalf of the competent European bank resolution authority, the Single Resolution Board (SRB) based in Brussels, has imposed a moratorium on Sberbank Europe with immediate effect.