Swift says it will comply with applicable sanctions laws issued following the commitment by the European Commission, France, Germany, Italy, the UK, Canada to remove selected Russian banks from the global messaging system over which letter of credit (L/C), guarantees and other transactions are routinely managed (DC World News, 28 February 2022).

In a statement released today the Belgium-based cooperative says it is aware of the joint statement issued by the western allies in which they commit to bar certain Russian banks from Swift in response to Russia's military action in Ukraine.

Swift says it is now engaging with the authorities to understand which entities will be subject to these new measures and will disconnect them once it receives legal instruction to do so.

Crisis resolution

"Diplomatic decisions have brought Swift into efforts to bring this crisis to an end, and we will always comply with applicable sanctions laws," the statement says.

It adds that the Swift community will be kept updated on developments through regular customer channels, and the Knowledge Centre of mySWIFT on swift.com.

Expected impacts

Removing selected banks from the world's biggest international payments network would certainly hurt the Russian financial system.

But removing only selected banks will limit the impact and there are reports that some EU countries are negotiating to allow certain Russian banks to remain connected to Swift to secure supplies of Russian gas to Europe, which, if those negotiations prove successful, would also soften the impact.

The Swift statement, "A message for the SWIFT community" can be found here.

This article represents the views of the author and not necessarily those of the ICC or Coastline Solutions.