Of 45 foreign banks active in Russia at the start of the war in Ukraine, 17 still have operations in the country and are paying taxes that help fund Moscow’s war effort, a Ukrainian economic think tank has reported.
In 2024, foreign banks recorded net profits of $3.4 billion in Russia and paid $1.3 billion in taxes, according to the KSE Institute, an analytical unit of the Kyiv School of Economics (KSE).
The think tank said the profits of foreign banks accounted for 8% of the sector’s total while representing just 2.72% of its assets.
“This money helps keep Russia’s economy—and its war—running,” the institute wrote on social media.
The highest earner was Austria’s Raiffeisenbank, which posted earnings of $1.54 billion last year, followed by ICBC (Industrial and Commercial Bank of China) with $370 million.
Next were Hungary’s OTP Bank, one of the biggest banking players in Central and Eastern Europe ($350 million), Credit Europe Bank, a Dutch-registered bank owned by Turkish financial holding company FIBA Group ($166 million), Bank of China ($144 million) and China Construction Bank ($40 million).
China was the third-highest earning country in Russian banking in 2024, with $566 million in profits.
Italy was in second place on $706 million, behind Austria due to Raiffeisenbank’s $1.54 billion, the KSE reported.
The banking data was included in the KSE Institute’s monthly report on the impact of foreign companies’ withdrawal from Russia, a monitoring initiative conducted as part of the Kyiv-based Leave Russia project.
The report showed that as of April 3, a total of 1,358 foreign companies had curtailed operations in Russia, 487 had exited the country completely and 2,270 continued to do business there.
