Payment technocrats have crippled EU’s ability to impose biting sanctions on Russia

Original IREF article of 16 March 2022 accessed on 21 March 2022

Published on 23 March 2022

The EU recently announced partial financial sanctions on Russia, designed to keep payments for energy moving. The EU accepted the contention – disproved below – that a bank either gets cut off from SWIFT, the global financial telecommunications network, completely […]

UK adopts European approach to SWIFT sanctions over Russia

Brexit-Watch article where this piece was originally published

Published on 7 March 2022

The UK’s financial sanctions over the Ukraine invasion fall well short of cutting Russia off SWIFT, maxing out on the usual self-congratulatory hyperbole whilst opening up significant risk. When we should be distinguishing our PR approach from that of the Kremlin, we instead get […]

Scholz needs a SWIFT decision – cut Russia off or lose American bank support for the Eurosystem

What is SWIFT? Screenshot of its homepage

Published on 26 February 2022

As already published on Facts4EU and Brexit-Watch

It has been reported that Chancellor Scholz has rejected the proposal that Russia be cut off from the SWIFT system as a punishment for its invasion of Ukraine. The Guardian has disseminated misinformation that it would anyway do little […]