The largest European banks that remained in Russia paid over 800 million .EUR taxes in 2023, which is four times more than before the start of the war with Ukraine, reported the newspaper Financial Times.
According to its information, the seven largest European banks by assets in Russia - Raiffeisen Bank International, UniCredit, ING, Commerzbank, Deutsche Bank, Intesa Sanpaolo and OTP - reported a total profit of over EUR 3 billion in 2023 This is three times more than in 2021, the publication claims.
The surge in profitability has led European banks to pay around €800m in taxes, up from €200m in 2021, according to a Financial Times analysis. At the same time, more than half of European banks' tax payments go to Austria's Raiffeisen Bank International, which has the largest presence in Russia among foreign lenders.
Foreign banks benefited from international sanctions against Russian banks, the newspaper notes. Such measures deprived their competitors of access to international payment systems and increased the attractiveness of Western banks for customers in the country.