By Andrei Skvarsky.
Russian individuals withdrew $479bn from Russia between 2006 and 2017, taking the money to 257 foreign countries and territories, Russian real estate broker Tranio said, citing Russia’s central bank.
The sum accounted for 2.4 per cent of Russia’s gross domestic product for that period, the brokerage said in a study posted on its website.
Tranio analysts argue that its withdrawal from Russia was one of the causes of the domestic financial crisis of 2014-2017.
The removal from Russia of a sum that was 3.3 times the size of the estimated 2018 GDP of Hungary was a continuous process that took up the entire period from 2006 to 2017, according to the study.
The personal money that was being transferred out of Russia kept increasing steadily in volume with amounts only going down on two occasions – after the global financial crisis of 2007-2008 and after the outbreak of Russia’s domestic financial crisis of 2014-2017.
The outflow peaked in 2014, hitting the $69bn mark that year, which was 70 per cent higher than the average annual level during the 12-year period, the study said.
The total volume of personal money taken out of Russia plummeted in 2015 but started increasing again in 2016 and kept growing throughout that year.
Switzerland topped the list of countries where Russians took their money – $47.2bn ended up there.
China was the number two destination ($32.2bn). The United States ranked third ($24.3bn), Britain fourth ($21.5bn), and Germany fifth ($17.5bn), according to the study.
Remarkably, the sixth rung was held by Latvia, a country with a population of less than 2m and a 2017 GDP of $31.5bn.
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