Default in Russia: Moscow denies defaulting on its debt

Russia refused on Monday that its country is in default, although it admitted that due to international sanctions, two payments did not reach your creditors before the deadline, Sunday.

“Don’t get the money by investors is not the result of any payment, but is caused by the action of third partiessomething that is not directly considered (…) as a case of default, “the Russian finance ministry insisted in a statement on Monday.

“Claims on a Russian default they are absolutely illegitimate“Kremlin spokesman Dmitri Peskov stressed to the press, referring to information released by financial news agencies such as Bloomberg, which had indicated that Russia was in default.

Because of the sanctions ordered in response to his offensive in Ukraine, Russia you can no longer make transfers in Western currencies to repay interest on its acquired foreign debt in dollars or euros.

On May 20, Russia announced that it had paid interest on two debts, respectively of 71.25 million dollars and 26.5 million euros, which is seven days before the scheduled date to prevent these transfers from being blocked due to sanctions. , entered into force. come on five days later.

But those sums were never transferred to creditors, since heLSA banking intermediaries blocked in the wake of the sanctions, stressed the Russian ministry.

Therefore, Russia has been in a default situation since Sunday nightdeadline for making refunds in question.

probably fly will default on all payments related to your debt expected abroad for the rest of the year, in the amount of hundreds of millions of dollars.

“The international payment and clearing systems obtained the funds on time and in full and had the legal and financial means to transfer the funds in question to the final recipients,” the Russian Finance Ministry denounced.

Payments in rubles

These two payments are the last that Moscow has tried to make in foreign currency. From the end of May, Russia claims it is paying off its debt in rubles acquired in dollars or euros, which also exposes the country to a situation of non-payment.

Last week, Russian Finance Minister Anton Siluanov defined the situation “joke”.

“This is not a default of our country but of artificial and deliberate collapse of the international payment system“, denounced the vice president of the upper house of Parliament, Konstantin Kosachev, in statements to the Ria Novosti agency.

The Kremlin spokesman warned that the West should not appropriate, under the pretext of default, the nearly $ 300 billion of Russian financial reserves that they are frozen abroad due to Western sanctions against Moscow.

These reserves are “illegitimately frozen and any attempt to use them will be equally illegitimate, it will practically be a robbery“he stressed.

Since the three major international financial rating agencies stopped working with Russiais an organization that brings together large international banks (Committees for the determination of credit derivatives) which assesses whether or not Russia honors payments to its creditors.

In 1998, nearly two years before Vladimir Putin arrived in the Kremlin, Russia, undermined by the effects of the fall Soviet Union, the crisis of the Asian economies and the drop in the prices of raw materials was forced not to pay the public debt impose a moratorium to its foreign debt.

The country, whose public debt in foreign currency then reached 141 billion dollarshe had to wait twelve years to be able to borrow again in international markets.

Russia’s previous default on its foreign debt dates back to 1918when Lenin decided not to pay off the debts of the tsarist regime.

AFP

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