Who needs Cyprus crisis?

By Vestnik Kavkaza

The Cyprus authorities stated that restrictions on money orders, receiving cash, and other banking operations may continue for a month. Yesterday the banks which didn’t work for two weeks were opened under strict security of the police.

“This crisis is manageable, and it broke exactly in order to set in motion the capital that Europeans considered it necessary to set in motion,” Alexei Mukhin, general director of the Center for Political Information, says. “As the result there will be a certain degradation of the reputation of the banking system of Cyprus, which is well within the specific development of relations between the member-states of the EU, the countries that are donors, and those countries that are considered recipients. The main subject of the attacks was, of course, deposit accounts, including Russian ones. The result is a global movement of funds, which is likely to be beneficial for the European and American economies in some aspects. At this moment the transaction of buying TNK-BP by «Rosneft» was held, and most of it took place just in Cyprus. And I think that to some extent these things, since everything in the world is connected, these things are in some way related. And I think that this fact explains the nervousness with which the team of Vladimir Putin attended the last stages of the deal. That is, in principle, it is possible that someone is trying to break it. The names of the "someone", of course, are known, because no major oil company in the world, including the American or British ones, is interested in the emergence of new market agents, champions like "Rosneft". We do not really know if money was transferred for 100% of TNK-BP, and no one now will admit this, even if it is not transferred in order not to derail the deal. Perhaps now negotiators are reactively negotiating safeguards for these payments. I think that this is really a political point, because it is a matter for Russia's reputation, creating a company and, in fact, a certain victory because, as I recall, in the mid-2000s, when "Rosneftegaz" was created to unite "Gazprom" and "Rosneft", again, by the efforts of Igor Sechin, the opinion of the American leadership was strongly negative, and the company was not founded. Now, apparently, in Russia there were forces to do this business. And we have done it, though, with our allies among the Americans and the British - in fact, the British queen and one of the champions of the American gas market ExxonMobil. As they say in England, a miracle lasts three days. I think that in the near future the situation with the Cypriot banking disasters will slowly recede. The EU and the IMF will set other goals, more interesting. I think the point impact, which was produced on Russia in this sense, already has had a certain effect. I do not think anyone is interested now in angering the Russians, including the IMF.

“The story of offshore companies arose in 2006 at the World Congress on Anti-Corruption, and in lobby people said: guys, look, this story is basically prepared for Russia, as an economic model is tied to offshores. This is a weak point,” Kirill Kabanov, head of the National Anti-Corruption Committee, member of the Presidential Council for Civil Society Institutions and Human Rights, reminds. “This situation can be adversely continued later in the situation with Sochi. We can get the problem on June 14 when the IOC is due to inspect the facilities. I do not like conspiracy theories, but, according to experts, with whom I was working at the time, the history of the Olympics in the Soviet Union and then the oil crisis destroyed the Soviet Union, although the destruction continued from the time when the ideology ceased to exist, but, unfortunately, in Russia today, there is no concept of state ideology, a cementing ideological component, which must exist in a society. Conversely, in Russia, there are some negative trends in society that are explained by processes including corruption.”

“Cyprus has two main objectives in life,” Yekaterina Kuznetsova, director of European programs of the Center for the Study of Post-Industrial Society, believes. “First, in some way to keep ahead of Turkey, and the second - to keep some semblance of economic sovereignty, a goal that it wanted, in fact, through the creation of an offshore economy. Cyprus was, in general, doing something not too different from what most of our oligarchs did: it just sat on the streams, received and redirected them. It was not just a desire to redirect streams, but the desire to improve in some way the eurozone in terms of economic stability, financial stability, and in terms of just removing offshores. This is a common policy. 

What is surprising in this case is, of course, the reaction of the Russian government, when more than a week ago it was possible to have smaller losses, if the Russian government is at all concerned about the interests of depositors and the Russian companies. But the point is whether there is a moratorium on external payments. That is the question. If that is imposed, a problem may arise for Russian banks, and these are - no less - banks such as VTB, "Nomos", "Alpha", "Gazprombank" and others.”