Belarusian banks will let in external control

Foreign auditors are allowed to examine the Belarusian banks along with the domestic ones.

This decision was made following a report regarding the selling by seven Belarusian banks of the significant share of their assets to foreign bankers.

Mr. Stanislav Bogdankevich, ex-Chairman of the Board of the National Bank of Belarus, thinks that current changes in legislation aim “to improve credibility of the Belarusian banking system vis-à-vis foreign partners”.

“For the same reason the structure of internal management of the banks was changed in order to make it corresponding with the Western standards, previously it based on the administrative principle. This is a new approach and I would say it touches upon the foundation of the banking system”, said Mr. Bogdankevich.

Prof. Bogdankevich also believes that the final goal for all changes is “to attract foreign investors and to attract foreign capital into the economy of Belarus, including the banking sphere where there was no influx of the foreign capital until now”.

In the mean time, the existing political circumstances could interfere with the inflow of foreign capitals into the Belarusian banks. Last week in Vienna in the course of an international conference Mr. Yaroslav Romanchuk, a participant of the conference, distributed an address to the depositors of the Austrian Raiffeisenbank on behalf of the united Democratic forces of Belarus, appealing to them to discontinue using services provided by this bank and to withdraw their capitals from it.

The leader of the Belarusian People’s Front political party of Belarus, Mr. Liavon Barshcheuski, the initiator of the mentioned above action said in an interview with the “Radio Liberty”, “Funds come to Belarus from Russia and from the Raiffeisenbank as well”.

“Taking into account recent publications in the Meida, it looks like Raiffeisenbank is giving credits to the Belarusian regime in large amounts. It is all done in a non-transparent way, which is not a common practice of the Western banks. Therefore we are standing for transparency to ensure that the allocated financial resources are not used to support enforcement structures and repressive mechanisms. So far there was no reaction from the Raiffeisenbank in this regard. Our claims were not officially rejected. It means there must be something behind it”.

Some Belarusian banks put on sale significant shares of assets at foreign markets. It was announced that the controlling packet of shares of two large state owned banks (Belpromstroybank and Investbank) were sold to foreign investors. Two more large state owned banks (Belarusbank and Agrobank) put on sale around 15 percent of their stock. Another seven banks are planning to sell abroad significant parts of their shares.

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