The Russian government will not compensate Russian savers who have lost money in the Cyprus banking crisis but is likely to consider helping companies where the Russian state is a shareholder, the BBC cited Russian First Deputy Prime Minister Igor Shuvalov as saying.
A good chunk of the foreign money kept in Cypriot banks is Russian, a major reason being Cyprus’s status as an offshore tax haven, with some politicians accusing Cyprus of being a hub for Russian money laundering.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has slammed the “unjust, unprofessional and dangerous” 10bn-euro bailout from the European Union and International Monetary Fund, whose terms require that Cypriot bank depositors pay a tax of up to 9.9% on their accounts.
The Russian government “won’t take any action” to help Russians who have lost some of their Cypriot savings but would be willing to look at situations where the losers were “companies in which the Russian state is a shareholder”, though “for this it would certainly not be necessary to help the Republic of Cyprus”, the BBC quoted Shuvalov as saying in a Russian television programme.
Earlier, Shuvalov had argued in a programme on Russia’s Business FM radio that the Cyprus crisis would help Putin to pursue his policy of stopping Russian money being transferred to offshore zones.
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