The Biden administration is trying to maintain sanctions pressure while avoiding “a global economic catastrophe,” the agency says
The Biden administration is privately urging leading US banks like JPMorgan Chase and Citigroup to continue doing business with strategic Russian firms despite sanctions imposed on Moscow over the conflict in Ukraine, people familiar with the issue told Bloomberg.
The requests have been made by the US Treasury and State Departments as the government tries to maintain pressure on Russia, but at the same time avoid “a global economic catastrophe,” the news agency reported on Monday.
Washington has been requesting services such as US dollar settlements, payment transfers, and trade finance for Russian firms that are exempt from certain aspects of the sanctions, including gas giant Gazprom and fertilizer producers Uralkali and PhosAgro, the sources said.
As a result, the largest American banks are currently being “caught in the push-pull” between the Biden administration and Congress, which insists on harsher measures against Moscow.
The sanctions prevent US banks from providing services to blacklisted entities and people, with violations punishable by multibillion-dollar fines.
Jamie Dimon the CEO of investment bank JPMorgan Chase was reportedly grilled at a congressional hearing in September over his company allegedly using loopholes in the sanctions regime to keep working with Russia. The banker responded by saying that “we are following the instructions of the American government as they asked us to do it.”
When addressed on the matter by Bloomberg, a Treasury spokesman said that it had issued guidance to banks, clarifying that activities in humanitarian aid, energy, and agriculture are authorized. JPMorgan and Citigroup have declined to comment.
“Congress needs to understand this - the US government has not imposed a comprehensive embargo with Russia, there’s still pockets of business that are allowed,” Nnedinma Ifudu Nweke, an attorney specializing in US economic sanctions at Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP, pointed out.
The Treasury “will continue to have meetings to educate banks on those pockets of allowable transactions, especially in the humanitarian space,” Nweke added.
https://www.rt.com/russia/566119-us-banks-sanctions-ukraine/
The recently-released tranche of additional documents tied to Jeffrey Epstein include remarks by a woman identifying as one of the victims of the late disgraced financier and convicted sex trafficker, in which she refers to Donald Trump as a witness to the killing and disposal of the body of her infant.
The US Department of Justice released the documents numbering tens of thousands, which include FBI tips and complaints implicating Trump, on Wednesday.
Reports emerging on Friday across various outlets, including the UK edition of American online newspaper The International Business Times, pointed to inclusion in the documents of an FBI intake form dated March 3, 2020 recording a complaint from the unnamed woman.
The complainant said she had been trafficked at age 13 in the early 1980s and described an incident in 1984 involving the killing of her newborn child aboard a yacht in Mona Lake, Michigan.
According to the document, the woman said her uncle had carried out the killing and disposed of the ...
The Russian leader said in 2008 that it could lead to “long-term conflict” with Washington, according to transcripts of the talks
Russian President Vladimir Putin warned his then-US counterpart, George W. Bush, almost two decades ago that attempts to make Ukraine a member of NATO could split the country apart and result in a confrontation between Moscow and Washington, records of conversations between the two leaders have revealed.
On Tuesday, the US National Security archives published verbatim transcripts of several exchanges between Putin and Bush throughout the 2000s.
During their first meeting in Slovenia in June 2001, the Russian president questioned the need for NATO’s enlargement, but stressed that he “can imagine us [Moscow and Washington] becoming allies,” according to the files.
His tone stiffened significantly by the time of their last meeting in the Russian city of Sochi in April 2008, a year after Putin delivered his famous speech at the Munich Security Conference, ...
Senator Rand Paul has published his annual Festivus report detailing wasteful spending and record debt payments
The US government has spent over $1.6 trillion this year on wasteful programs, such as teaching ferrets how to binge-drink alcohol and dosing dogs with cocaine, according to Senator Rand Paul’s latest annual ‘Festivus Report’.
The Kentucky Republican’s 2025 edition notes a total of $1,639,135,969,608 in waste, including $1.22 trillion spent on interest payments for the US national debt, which has reached nearly $40 trillion.
Specific expenditures criticized include $2.1 million for researchers to collect saliva samples and survey partiers at EDM festivals in New York City about drug use. The National Institutes of Health spent $5.2 million to dose dogs with cocaine, while over $13.8 million funded experiments on beagles.
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