The US Treasury has reached an agreement with Microsoft Bill Gates on sanctions violations against Russia, Cuba, Iran and Syria. In total, Washington recorded 1.3 thousand cases of sanctions violations by the IT giant. As part of the settlement, Microsoft will transfer a modest $3 million to the US budget. According to the OFAC notice, Microsoft sold software licenses and provided its services to people on the sanctions lists in Cuba, Iran, Syria and Russia between July 2012 and April 2019. . The total amount of licenses sold to sanctioned persons amounted to $12 million. If the sanctions had not been violated by an American company, the fine would have been an order of magnitude higher. BNP Paribas paid $9 billion for violating US sanctions against Sudan, Iran and Cuba. @banksta
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The Bank of Russia has not revoked licenses from credit and non-credit organizations for almost eight months: the last case of a forced shutdown of a bank took place in August. Since 1991, the Central Bank has not made such a long pause in the application of extreme supervisory measures in the entire history of modern Russia. @banksta
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The pressure on Switzerland intensified, and the ambassadors of France, Italy, Germany, the United States, Canada, Japan and the United Kingdom joined in. The G7 countries call on the Swiss Federal Council to intensify the search for funds from Russian oligarchs. In the letter, they expressly invite Zurich to take part in the international task force “Russian elites, proxies and oligarchs.” Their goal: to implement large-scale financial sanctions against oligarchs close to the Russian government. @banksta
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Biden must stop harming US oil production, the Texas oil regulator said. They called the president’s energy policy “devastating” and urged him to let American operators produce more energy. @banksta
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Almost half of Russians (49%), among those who have experience transferring funds between their accounts in different banks, faced a commission for these transfers. At the same time, according to the NAFI survey, almost all respondents make such transfers from time to time, and some even every day. Commissions for transfers cause misunderstanding among the vast majority of the population, because when transferring from a “salary” card to one that a citizen is used to using, he loses his money. Experts call this situation “payment slavery.” Now the State Duma is considering a bill to introduce a free limit for such transfers up to 1.4 million rubles, but some of the largest state-owned banks and banks are actively resisting, despite the fact that the initiative comes from the Central Bank. @banksta
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The investment division of Bank of America interrupted an online conference on geopolitics due to complaints about the pro-Russian statements of the guests, the Financial Times reported, citing the participants of the event. Two interlocutors of the publication claim that at the conference, Bank of America Securities vice president for international relations Daniel Sheenan called Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky a “master manipulator.” The guests also complained about University of Rhode Island political science professor Mykola Petro, who said that “under any scenario, Ukraine will be the biggest loser.” The reasons, in his opinion, will be the destruction of the country’s industry and population decline. Petro also stated that the US government is not interested in a cessation of hostilities, since it will most benefit from a protracted conflict through “a sharp increase in the energy and military dependence of the EU on the US.” @banksta
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S&P has downgraded Ukraine’s long-term foreign currency sovereign rating to ‘CCC’ from ‘CCC+’ amid concerns over a debt restructuring plan by mid-2024, Reuters writes. @banksta
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It’s time to update! Soon our convenient debit card will look completely different. Everything you need for every day, and nothing more. The mood color is the same ????
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Bank of Russia: banks have introduced a cash withdrawal service using a QR code. In the mobile application, the client can independently generate such a code for the required amount, bring it to the scanner in an ATM and withdraw cash. This has been exploited by attackers. They call bank customers under the guise of employees of a credit institution, report that the bank has received an unauthorized request to withdraw money from the account and ask them to send a QR code to cancel the operation. A QR code is an instruction to a bank to issue money without entering a PIN code. @banksta
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For the first time, Russia has risen to second place in the world in cryptocurrency mining, writes Forbes. Russia has 1 GW of mining capacity, the leading US has 4 GW. @banksta
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The State Duma Committee on Property finalized the draft law on the specifics of investments in strategic business companies and included in it a provision stating that citizens of the Russian Federation with a residence permit in another country should also be considered a foreign investor, now only citizens of the Russian Federation with citizenship of another country belong to this category. @banksta
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To friends to play a console, to a hockey match or to a store for sweets: Citydrive carsharing gives an increased cashback of up to 23% for trips to your Favorite address until May 15 ???? Citydrive also launched the @address_citydrive_bot bot, in which you need to guess which street is real and which is fictional. Test your intuition! All participants will receive a promotional code for the first trip for 1 ruble and a funny sticker pack. And you can add your favorite address in the Citydrive app. #advertising, OOO “NTS”, citydrive.ru, erid: LjN8KMBHc
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All “digital euro” payments will be tracked, ECB President Christine Lagarde shared during a private conversation. According to her, only small transactions will remain out of control – no more than €300-400. @banksta
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Members of the German Parliament are calling for an investigation into allegations that Chancellor Olaf Scholz was involved in a $48 million Warburg bank tax evasion. @banksta
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Russian banks on Friday reduced their appetite for yuan liquidity from the Central Bank after peak demand, paying off debt, according to data from the regulator. Banks sharply increased their borrowing of Chinese yuan from the Central Bank of Russia in early April amid a temporary shortage of foreign exchange liquidity in “unfriendly” currencies on the market, analysts said. Yuan swaps are the only mechanism for supporting banks with foreign exchange liquidity, which the Central Bank has at its disposal in the face of the inability to conduct transactions with dollars and euros due to sanctions. On April 4, the Central Bank provided banks with yuan liquidity under the currency swap instrument for 2.78 billion yuan, with a daily limit on these operations of 10 billion yuan. @banksta
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91% of Russians transfer money between accounts in different banks, analysts found out???? And 100% of Russians DO NOT WANT to pay commissions for transfers! Stop paying banks – transfer for free. Alfa-Bank was the first in Russia to abolish commissions for transfers and payments to any banks. No more commissions – everything is FREE for everyone ❤️ @alfabank
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Choosing a credit card now could be difficult if not for a new offer from Otkritie. Banksters from Otkritie are once again setting new standards for credit cards. This time they created an ultra-credit card, in which, it seems, they collected everything that we love. ???? Extended interest-free period of 180 days ???? Cashback 5% on all purchases in the first month ???? Free withdrawal up to 50 000 ₽ per month ???? Free issue and delivery ???? Free maintenance forever You can apply here only until April 30th.
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Since the beginning of the year, the number of bankrupt Russians has risen sharply. From January to March, the number of citizens who were declared financially insolvent by the courts increased by 40.3% compared to the same period in 2022, Izvestia writes. In real terms, 76 thousand Russians became bankrupt against 54.2 thousand a year earlier. @banksta
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Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva said the US and the EU quickly became parties to the hostilities in Ukraine instead of making time for peace talks. @banksta
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Settlements in the digital ruble “leave a digital footprint,” said Olga Skorobogatova, First Deputy Chairman of the Central Bank. If the necessary legal framework is in place, information about such payments can be tracked. @banksta
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The budget deficit for the first quarter of the year amounted to 2.4 trillion rubles, follows from the data of the Ministry of Finance. Budget revenues amounted to 5.7 trillion rubles, which is 21% lower than revenues for the first quarter of last year. Oil and gas revenues – 1.6 trillion rubles, having collapsed by 45% due to cheap Urals oil, as well as a reduction in natural gas exports. @banksta
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⚡️Meanwhile, Kandinsky 2.1, which we wrote about earlier, has been tested by 1 million unique users, a day faster than ChatGPT. They managed to generate over 5 million images. In addition, the Russian Kandinsky has become the fastest growing neural network in the world. The leaders are such requests as: “cat”, “love”, “space” and “happiness”. You can evaluate the capabilities of Kandinsky 2.1 in the Telegram bot. @banksta
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Xi Jinping persuaded Macron to “stand against” the United States. Reuters writes about this, commenting on the talks between the President of France and the leader of China in Beijing. As the agency notes, China considers France one of the likely allies in Europe, so they gave Macron a luxurious reception. @banksta
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Tinkoff has made life easier for legal entities. Now they can log in with Tinkoff ID in a couple of clicks. Companies that have a personal account in Tinkoff Business can log in, and the connection to the service is also available to customers of other banks. The service will automatically upload the details, provide extended information about counterparties, and automatically issue invoices. One of the first to connect to Tinkoff ID at hh.ru. Representatives of the largest job search portal note that this integration is a breakthrough in everyday communication with employers. A simple authorization of Tinkoff ID has already made it possible to exclude entire blocks of manual labor associated with checking the integrity of employers. @banksta
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The Chinese authorities have imposed sanctions against the American Hudson University, the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and the leadership of both organizations. It is reported by AP with reference to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of China. @banksta
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The de-dollarization of the Russian economy has an interesting effect. The yuan, and not the dollar at all, now dominates in Russia’s foreign exchange settlements; the rupee, tenge, Arab dirham, Hong Kong dollar and other conditionally “friendly currencies” are also popular. However, all of them have a much smaller money supply: well, it never occurred to Beijing to print yuan in the same quantities in which the Americans printed dollars. That is why any large settlement in the ruble-yuan pair (ruble-rupee, ruble-tenge, etc.) moves rates much more strongly than if this settlement took place through the mediation of the dollar. In fact, we are still riding the same swing as a year ago, when the exchange rate jumped from 120 rubles per dollar to 60 per month, although the amplitude has greatly decreased. Today is 80, in a month, when the Chinese are tempted to sell a large amount of yuan for rubles in order to re-equip some former German plant in the Russian outback, it will become 70. But such jumps cause a fair headache for business when planning. In any case, the non-Western world needs some kind of reserve currency to replace the dollar and the euro. It is clear that the first contender for this role is the yuan, but, in general, it is not very clear whether Beijing itself is interested in this, which will have to significantly (if not “completely”) rebuild its financial system for this. It is quite possible that in the end we will reach some kind of digital yuanerendorube, which will not have direct circulation, but will be used in mutual settlements between non-Western countries.
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The attractiveness of US stocks against the backdrop of yields on US government bonds fell to a minimum since 2007. In 2008, the financial crisis followed and the S&P 500 index collapsed by 45% in a year, recalls the WSJ. @banksta
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Alfa-Bank OPENED A SCHOOL AGAIN ???????????? How is that? We launched the second course at the soft skills school together with H, a career development service. We teach to be flexible, soft and not burn out at work. For free? YES ❤️ Who teaches? Alpha IT experts share their experience on how to successfully pass interviews, speak in public and resolve conflicts. How to study? Online – only 3 lessons of 30 minutes. Where? Right here at a convenient time???????? Channel editor: closes 100 TV tabs for the evening ???? @alfabank
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Wealthy crypto billionaires collectively lost more than $110 billion in 2022, according to Forbes. Of the 19 participants in last year’s list of crypto billionaires, only nine people retained this status. One of the leaders of the rating, the founder of the FTX crypto exchange, faces a life sentence on charges of fraud. The first place in the new ranking is still occupied by the creator of Binance, Changpeng Zhao. @banksta
Keir Starmer and Ursula von der Leyen discuss a smoother Brexit
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen made a step towards mending the strained...