The Development Bank of South Africa (DBSA) has exposed Russia’s lies about the alleged loan to the Russian state giant VEB-RF, which is under sanctions.
Putin’s propaganda agency TASS had previously claimed that such a deal had been concluded in South African currency. And this was allegedly achieved within the framework of the BRICS meeting.
DBSA Chairman Ibrahim Rasul and its CEO Boitumelo Mosako said that they only participated in the annual meeting of the BRICS banks. The meeting discussed the inclusion of new BRICS members in the interbank cooperation platform. But during the summit in Moscow this week, no credit line was signed.
VEB-RF, formerly Vnesheconombank, is one of Russia’s largest state-owned financial institutions that lends to the country’s economy.
The United Kingdom imposed sanctions on VEB-RF more than a decade ago, after Russia seized Ukraine’s Crimean region. The United States added it to the sanctions list in 2022, only after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
The US sanctions include freezing its foreign assets and excluding the bank from the SWIFT interbank payment system. According to the U.S. government, VEB-RF supports Russia’s defense capabilities and its economy.
As a reminder, the U.S. Treasury recently imposed additional sanctions on third countries that help Russia obtain goods and technologies to continue its aggressive war.
