Austrian activists protested in Vienna on Wednesday in front of a building where shareholders of Raiffeisen Bank International were meeting, demanding that the bank stop doing business with Russia and accusing it of financing the war in Ukraine.
 “Russia will continue to fight this war as long as Raiffeisen Bank keeps investing,” one activist can be heard saying in a video posted by the Austrian branch of Attac, an international activist network advocating for social, economic, and environmental justice.
As bank representatives warned the activist to stop, he shouted, “It cannot be that money is worth more than human lives.”
In response to protesters' demands for the bank to withdraw from Russia, where it still conducts extensive business three years after the full-scale invasion, RBI said that it “has clearly stated that RBI wants to exit the Russian market with the sale of its Russian subsidiary AO Raiffeisenbank,” according to Christof Danz, a bank spokesperson.
“While working on the exit, RBI is reducing its Russian business in accordance with the requirements of Austrian and European banking supervision,” Danz added.
The protest follows reports by OCCRP, Der Standard, and Paper Trail Media, revealing that Raiffeisen delivered $10 billion in cash to Russia shortly before the country invaded Ukraine in 2022—an invasion that triggered mass sanctions.
The funds were sent to Moscow across 189 shipments, 10 of which arrived on or after February 24, just as Russian tanks were advancing on Kyiv and warplanes bombed Ukrainian cities.
According to data reviewed by reporters, Bank of America also sent five shipments from the U.S. to Moscow over a four-week period in early 2022, totaling $798 million, with its final shipment arriving in Moscow on February 14.
The Brink’s Company, based in Richmond, Virginia, handled 64 shipments with a total value of $1.3 billion.
Together, the shipments from the three institutions amounted to just over $12 billion flowing into Russia from January 11 to February 25, according to OCCRP calculations based on exchange rates at the time.
All three institutions denied wrongdoing, and the cash movements were not illegal at the time (the EU and U.S. implemented currency export bans to Russia shortly after the invasion).
In response to the investigation, Austrian Member of Parliament Nina Tomaselli has submitted a formal inquiry to the Federal Minister of Finance regarding Raiffeisen Bank International’s (RBI) cash deliveries to Russia.
Tomaselli’s inquiry seeks clarity from the Ministry of Finance on multiple fronts, including whether authorities were aware of RBI’s role in the cash shipments, whether any investigations have been conducted, and what steps have been taken to prevent further financial support to sanctioned entities.
Additional questions focus on potential reputational risks for Austria’s financial sector, RBI’s compliance with EU and U.S. sanctions, and any communications with regulatory bodies such as the European Central Bank (ECB) and the U.S. Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC).
“The case detailed by OCCRP is yet another reminder of the reputational risks tied to doing business in Russia,” said Vladyslav Vlasiuk, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s sanctions commissioner and secretary of the International Working Group on Russian Sanctions.
“Given the scale and timing of cash deliveries, it wouldn’t be surprising if some of the funds were used to purchase critical components for missiles and drones,” he said.Â
“Obviously, this was willful blindness,” said Agiya Zagrebelska, policy director of the Economic Security Council of Ukraine (ESCU), adding that the banks were aware of the risks and that the delivered cash could potentially have been “used to pay for war crimes.”
“However, potential profit and the view of Russia as a valuable market guided their actions,” Zagrebelska said.
While RBI has repeatedly stated its plans to pull out of Russia, the bank has failed to close its Russian operations and has delayed its withdrawal while maintaining “significant financial ties to the Russian government and state-owned enterprises,” according to Max Hammer, a human rights campaigner and project lead for BankTrack, a Netherlands-based international organization that tracks banks and the activities they finance.
According to a recent investigation by BankTrack and B4Ukraine, RBI’s subsidiary Raiffeisen Capital, a Russia-domiciled asset manager wholly owned by RBI’s Russian subsidiary AO Raiffeisenbank, reportedly continues to actively trade securities issued by the Russian government and state-owned firms.
The asset manager also reportedly holds Russian ministry bonds issued after March 9, 2022. Dealing with Russian government-issued securities post-cutoff date is prohibited under EU sanctions.
Among the protesters’ demands was that RBI stop doing business “with sanctioned war profiteers,” as they claimed the bank still provides “Putin-friendly oligarchs across Eastern Europe with loans and accounts,” said Nezir Sinani from B4Ukraine, an international network aimed at cutting off Russia’s financial resources for its war against Ukraine.
However, the bank denies the allegations, stating that it “maintains policies and procedures to comply with all applicable EU, U.S., and U.K. sanctions,” according to Danz.
Although the banks did not violate sanctions at the time of the cash deliveries, critics argue they should have known better.
“The entire West knew this invasion was about to happen, so why on earth did we allow Western companies to ship pallets of cash to Russia?” asked the U.S.-based investigative nonprofit The Kleptocracy Project.
