Vladimir Putin said that Russia was aware of pressure that the United States puts on France over the deal to build the Mistral warships for Russia and views it as blackmail, RIA reports. “What is being done now with the French banks causes nothing but outrage in Europe and in our country as well,” Putin said at a meeting with Russian ambassadors and permanent envoys.<\/p>\n
“We are aware of the pressure that our American partners exert on France with a purpose of not to deliver the Mistral warships to Russia. And we know even that the United States hinted that if the French do not deliver the Mistrals, then sanctions will gradually be lifted from the banks, or at least be reduced to minimum. If this is not blackmail, then what is it?” he added.<\/p>\n
His comments came after leading French bank BNP Paribas pleaded guilty Monday to US criminal charges of violating sanctions on Iran and Sudan for eight years and was fined a record $8.9 billion.<\/p>\n
France’s largest bank BNP Paribas has sufficient funding to back the fine and penalties it needs to pay under settlements with US authorities over sanctions busting, the French bank’s top executives said on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
“Our liquidity situation, we always guided it as being ample,” said Chief Financial Officer Lars Machenil, “At Q1 we had an overall excess of stable funding of 100 billion in euros out of which 50 billion was in US dollars. Yesterday when I looked into the systems…, that figure was basically unchanged at the end of the (second) quarter. This should allow having relevant cash for the settlement.”<\/p>\n
The Financial Officer added that there was “no hurry” to seek the additional tier 1 funding that is seen as a key measure of bank stability as a result of having to pay the fine, set at almost $9 under a settlement announced late on Monday in the US.<\/p>\n
Machenil also said that the bank plans to offer cash dividends for this year at 1.5 euro per share, the same as it was in 2013.<\/p>\n
France’s largest bank becomes the seventh bank to settle\u00a0a violations case. “Like other banks, BNP hid the names of Sudanese and Iranian clients when sending transactions coursing through its New York operations and the broader American financial system,” media report.<\/p>\n
France’s BNP to pay US $9 bln for violating American sanctions
\nBNP Paribas has neared a deal with US prosecutors that would see the French bank pay $8 billion to $9 billion and accept other punitive measures for violating American sanctions, The Wall Street Journal reported Sunday.<\/p>\n
It also demonstrates that in the increasingly more fragile alliance against Russia, more of Obama’s foreign policy partners are\u00a0turning their backs on the US.<\/p>\n
The WSJ reports “a group of 400 Russian sailors are scheduled to arrive on June 22 in the French Atlantic port of Saint-Nazaire to undergo months of instruction before some of them pilot the first of two Mistral-class carriers back to Russia in the fall, said one of these people.”<\/p>\n
As the WSJ explains, the training is a pivotal step that deepens France’s commitment to fulfilling the \u20ac1.2 billion ($1.6 billion) contract to supply Russia with the carriers, which are built to launch amphibious attacks with landing craft, helicopters and tanks.<\/p>\n
Calling off the Mistral contract, a French official said, would be akin to “shooting yourself in the foot,” forcing Paris to take the costly step of reimbursing Moscow.<\/p>\n
France has already completed the first ship and built half of the second Mistral, which is scheduled for delivery in 2015. The second ship is named The Sevastopol after the Crimean port that serves as a headquarters for Russia’s Black Sea Fleet.<\/p>\n
The Mistral is a potent weapon. The length of more than two football fields, the ship is designed to edge up to a shoreline and deploy more than a dozen tanks and attack helicopters as well as hundreds of troops.<\/p>\n
The ship also plugs a crucial gap in Russia’s armed forces. Moscow boasts one of the world’s largest armies and a formidable air force. But Russia’s Black Sea fleet lacks an amphibious vessel like the Mistral, capable of launching a land invasion. That weakness deprived Moscow of a crucial knockout punch in 2008, when Russian troops invaded Georgia but never managed to dominate the former Soviet countries shoreline, forcing a stalemate.<\/p>\n
“A ship like that would have allowed the Black Sea Fleet to accomplish its mission in 40 minutes,” Russian Navy Admiral Vladimir Vysotkiy said at the time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Vladimir Putin said that Russia was aware of pressure that the United States puts on France over the deal to build the Mistral warships for Russia and views it as blackmail, RIA reports. “What is being done now with the French banks causes nothing but outrage in Europe and in our country as well,” Putin … Continue reading “US blackmailing French banks says Putin”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2961,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[49,3],"tags":[9361,8998,534,9360,2376,1343,66],"class_list":["post-14526","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-europe","category-news","tag-blackmailing","tag-bnp-paribas","tag-france","tag-mistral","tag-nato","tag-putin","tag-russia"],"cc_featured_image_caption":{"caption_text":false,"source_text":false,"source_url":false},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14526","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2961"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14526"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14526\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14529,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14526\/revisions\/14529"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14526"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14526"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14526"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}