There are no deposits of Kazakhstan citizens in Cyprus banks: Marchenko

There are no deposits of Kazakhstan legal entities or individuals in Cyprus banks, KazTAG reports citing chairman of Kazakhstan National Bank Gregory Marchenko. "I wanted to make a statement. We have checked the data as of October 1: we found no deposits of Kazakhstan legal entities or individuals in Cyprus banks and our banks have no relations with Cyprus banks. Cyprus in this regard is more of a Russian realm," Marchenko said during online-conference at profinance.kz. According to him, the fact that "the European Union made such a decision is surprising", "We also have our broad experience in restructuring, but it raises certain concerns when it is called for by heads of EU countries. There should not be such improvisations at such level, i.e. this has to be well-prepared," Marchenko stressed. On the other hand, according to Marchenko, it makes a difference whether this step had been coordinated with Russia, that also has its say because "Russia is one of the creditor of Cyprus". "But in general it is hard to talk about the effect of this step for several reasons: a. this law has not been adopted by Cyprus parliament and we don't know whether it will be; b. if they have already started making these amendments, we have to understand how things are going to look like in the end; c. Russia has not given its final opinion yet; d. we don't know how it will affect the banking systems in other countries of Southern Europe, first of all Spain, Portugal and Italy. So it is hard to say now, but it can definitely cause harm," he said. According to Marchenko, there are many questions about this step, both economic and political ones. "There are certain principles and when they are violated even in some small country or under special circumstances, the issue is raised straight away whether such principles will be followed by other countries and in other situations," he added. The European Central Bank offered the Cypriot government a bailout package on condition that it levies a one-time tax on the country’s bank deposits. Cyprus authorities have been thinking of introducing taxes on deposits in exchange for the financial aid. The authorities suggested introducing a 6.75% non-recurrent tax on deposits under 100 000 Euro and a 9.9% tax on deposits exceeding that amount. Deposits below 20 000 Euro will be exempted from the tax.