Igor Shuvalov, chairman of VEB.RF. (Maksim Konstantinov/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)
The Development Bank of Southern Africa (DBSA) has denied that it signed a credit line deal with the sanctioned Russian state-owned giant VEB.RF, as reported in Russian media.
According to the Russian news agency TASS, South Africa signed an agreement with the Russian development bank to get credit facilities in rand.
But in a statement issued on Thursday morning, the DBSA said while its chairperson Ebrahim Rasool, and CEO Boitumelo Mosako took part in an annual meeting of banks to discuss coordination during the Brics summit in Moscow this week, “no credit line was signed” with its Russian counter party.
Instead, the BRICS Interbank Coordinating Mechanism (ICM) annual meeting focused on revising its framework agreement to include new members.
According to the agreement, signed in 2011, member banks would work together to strengthen cooperation in financing important projects and boosting cross-border transactions, among other goals. In 2015, the banks agreed to a guide for providing financing to each other in local currencies.
“However, thus far, no bilateral credit line contracts have been signed under this framework,” the DBSA said on Thursday.
‘Blood of Putin’s war’
VEB.RF, one of the largest financial institutions in Russia, provides loans for infrastructure and development projects.
The UK placed sanctions on VEB.RF more than a decade ago following Russia’s annexation of Crimea, while it has been included sanctioned in the US since 2022 after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
The US sanctions include the freezing of its overseas assets, and the bank has also been kicked out of the SWIFT interbank payment system. According to the US government, VEB helps to “prop up Russia’s defence capability and its economy”.
Former Russian deputy prime minister Igor Shuvalov was appointed as VEB’s chair in June this year, after serving as its CEO since 2018. He was a senior member of US president Vladimir Putin’s cabinet and a close advisor.
Shuvalov has been personally sanctioned by the UK, the European Union and various US government agencies.
In 2022, Labour leader Keir Starmer — who has since become prime minister — said Shuvalov was one of the “cronies who prop up [Putin’s] regime” and who “dipped their hands in the blood of Putin’s war”.
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