More than 70 clients, mostly Russian or with Slavic names, have filed a complaint in Paris for discrimination, denouncing the blockings qualified as abusive of their accounts by certain French banks since the start of the war in Ukraine in February, their lawyers said on Thursday. .
The 76 signatories of the complaint against X filed on Monday, consulted by AFP and revealed by Le Figaro, are mainly Russian nationals living in France or French people of Russian origin or with a Slavic-sounding name, customers in major French banking establishments or online banks.
The banking restrictions taken against them are the simple result of their true (or sometimes only supposed) membership of the Russian nation, one can read in the complaint which specifies that they do not not part of the list black Russian personalities or those close to Vladimir Putin that fall under European Union sanctions, such as asset freezes.
Refusal of loan, refusal to open or close accounts
The plaintiffs, from very diverse professions (student, librarian, entrepreneur, psychologist, etc.) have been confronted with a certain number of problems with French banking establishments since the beginning of the armed conflict between Russia and Ukraine, such as the refusal of a loan , blocking, refusal to open or close their accounts. These measures have been applied the blindarbitrarily, almost automatically, without prior information (…) and this, even before having requested and checked the elements likely to be checked with the customers concerned, namely their identity documents and their residence permits , underlines the complaint.
Asked by their customers about these difficulties, banks were able to answer: Due to the current political circumstances your account is temporarily blocked; it is banking regulations in the face of current political issues; the blocking is due to your nationality in the current context.
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Compliance Services Zone
These customers have experienced the zeal of the services of compliance [conformit, NDLR] banks, lament their lawyers, Me Marie-Laure Cartier and Alexandre Meyniel, who point to anxiety and financial damage. The banks know that they are in the illegality, that these customers are outside the scope of the sanctions regimes and yet they continue, they add. Some restrictions were fixed, but it took a long time, and sometimes they reappeared.
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