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.