Russian Banks as Weapons: ICC Urged to Act
In a groundbreaking legal move, international prosecutors are being urged to expand their focus from generals and politicians to bankers and central bank officials over their alleged role in enabling Russia’s occupation of Ukrainian territories, The Gaze reports, citing The Financial Times.
A new submission to the International Criminal Court (ICC) by legal non-profit LexCollective—supported by B4Ukraineand the Ukrainian Legal Advisory Group—argues that the Russian financial system has been a critical weapon in Vladimir Putin’s war arsenal.
The previously unreported filing, made under Article 15 of the Rome Statute, highlights the central role banks have played in consolidating control over occupied regions like Ukraine’s Kherson province.
“Russia has a pretty clear strategy, which is applied each time there’s a new region that they seek to occupy or annexe,” said Kristin Rosella, co-executive director of LexCollective. “Shortly after the occupation begins, the banking structures come pretty quickly, within a few months.”
The document specifically names executives from MRB Bank, Promsvyazbank, and CMR Bank, as well as Russia’s Finance Minister Anton Siluanov and senior officials at the Russian Central Bank, accusing them of facilitating the forced adoption of the ruble, the undermining of Ukraine’s currency, and coercing residents to obtain Russian passports to access basic banking services.
This, the submission states, constitutes conditioning access to essential services “on pledging allegiance to Russia,” in direct violation of international law.
“I don’t think people spend enough time analysing how Russia manages to finance the war,” said Anna Vlasyuk, a lawyer at the Kyiv School of Economics and contributor to the filing.
While the ICC has so far issued six arrest warrants—mostly targeting high-ranking Russian military and political figures—this filing seeks to push the boundaries of international legal precedent. If accepted, it would mark the first time since the Nuremberg trials that an international tribunal holds banking officials accountable for war-related crimes.
“This would certainly be contributing enormously to breaking new ground in an area of law that is rarely used,” noted Federica d’Alessandra, international law expert at Oxford University and the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
“But because of that, they would also face significant hurdles in tying their decisions to existing precedent — precisely because there’s so little of it.”
Though the chances of these officials appearing in The Hague anytime soon remain slim, the symbolic and practical impact of an ICC indictment could be significant.
It would bolster efforts to confiscate frozen Russian central bank assets in the West by reinforcing claims that the funds support military aggression rather than serving the Russian population.
Read more on The Gaze: New Sanctions against Russia – How they Reduce its Ability to Wage War