Posted on 03/25/2013 7:32:19 PM PDT by Lorianne
Yesterday, we first reported on something very disturbing (at least to Cyprus' citizens): despite the closed banks (which will mostly reopen tomorrow, while the two biggest soon to be liquidated banks Laiki and BoC will be shuttered until Thursday) and the capital controls, the local financial system has been leaking cash. Lots and lots of cash.
Alas, we did not have much granularity or details on who or where these illegal transfers were conducted with. Today, courtesy of a follow up by Reuters, we do.
The result, at least for Europe, is quite scary because let's recall that the primary political purpose of destroying the Cyprus financial system was simply to punish and humiliate Russian billionaire oligarchs who held tens of billions in "unsecured" deposits with the island nation's two biggest banks.
As it turns out, these same oligrachs may have used the one week hiatus period of total chaos in the banking system to transfer the bulk of the cash they had deposited with one of the two main Cypriot banks, in the process making the whole punitive point of collapsing the Cyprus financial system entirely moot.
(Excerpt) Read more at zerohedge.com ...
From Reuters:
While ordinary Cypriots queued at ATM machines to withdraw a few hundred euros as credit card transactions stopped, other depositors used an array of techniques to access their money.
No one knows exactly how much money has left Cyprus’ banks, or where it has gone. The two banks at the centre of the crisis - Cyprus Popular Bank, also known as Laiki, and Bank of Cyprus - have units in London which remained open throughout the week and placed no limits on withdrawals. Bank of Cyprus also owns 80 percent of Russia’s Uniastrum Bank, which put no restrictions on withdrawals in Russia. Russians were among Cypriot banks’ largest depositors.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/03/25/eurozone-cyprus-muddle-idUSL5N0CG13920130325
If this is true, Cyprus is screwed.
Yea, real quiet. Everyone in the world know they got their money out.
im definitely living in bizarro world when I cheer the Russians over progressives
Pure speculation on my part, but I’d guess that most of the big Russian money is long gone, and maybe some of the larger British expat accounts and well-heeled Cypriots may have taken advantage of this “bank holiday” as well.
As to where? Latvia, the Cayman Islands, Isle of Man, etc. most likely. I doubt any of it was repatriated to Russia. It flew away on a stream of electrons to other money havens.
Of course not! All the Russian oligarchs and mafiosos just let the EU take their money and just grumbled about it. /sarc
this guy is such an idiot.
The “purpose” was not to punish Russian criminals, that was merely a happy side effect of not bailing out a corrupt country’s corrupt banking system that enables international corrupt criminal enterprises by helping them launder money from: Human Trafficking, PING! Selling Goods to Global Terrorist organizations, PING! You name it Vladimir Putin’s murderous minions are in it up to their eyeballs.
bbbbbullshit
I am so tired of this “Tyler Durden” conspiracy nut halfwit.
But that could never happen here.
Uh oh.
Think about Warren Buffet, Goldman Sachs, Paulson and how that combo would have worked the same situation should it occur here.
I still can not figure out how that deal was never investigated.
Contrary from “warning Latvia” against taking the Russian money, they should have demanded that Latvia both take and seize the Russian money.
AND, while we’re at it, since you are too stupid even to read a freaking newspaper, NO BODY lost a penny. They just have to leave their money in the system. There were NO writedowns, but deposits were turned into assets with a longer maturity.
You do know the origin of the pseudonym “Tyler Durden”?
Go watch “Fight Club”.
What if one didn’t want their assets turned into something with a “longer maturity”. When in the hell did a cash deposit turn into an “asset” for a bank? Deposits are liabilities, moron.
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