EU sanctions Russian settlement depository

The European Union has expanded sanctions against Russia and added the National Settlement Depository, which Moscow planned to use to service the country's Eurobonds, to the list of sanctioned entities, an EU document showed on Friday.

Report informs, citing Reuters, that Russia said this week it was replacing Citibank, which has stopped servicing the country's Eurobonds, with its own National Settlement Depository (NSD), as it risks its first major external debt default in more than a century.

NSD, a Russian version of western clearing houses Euroclear and Clearstream, holds 70 trillion roubles ($1.12 trillion) worth of client assets, including 9 trillion roubles of foreign securities such as Eurobonds linked to the Russian state.

Analysts said that sanctions would block NSD's accounts in euros as well as in Euroclear and Clearstream and will also make it impossible to service forex-denominated bonds issued by the state and Russian companies.