Gazprombank closes down London operations

Gazprombank, Russia’s third largest lender, has shut down its London operations, according to documents the bank filed with Companies House.

The application to strike the bank off the register, filed on December 18 last year and first reported by BNE Intellinews, comes 18 months after the US and EU sanctioned the bank over Russia’s involvement in the Ukraine conflict, barring it from raising capital with a maturity of more than 30 days, reports Max Seddon in Moscow.

Gazprombank’s London office had been effectively dormant since 2012, when the bank withdrew its application for a UK investment banking license after authorities demanded more information about its shareholders, Bloomberg reported at the time.

Gazprombank was founded in 1990 as part of Gazprom, Russia’s giant gas monopoly. Gazprom retains a 36 percent stake in the secretive bank, which has numerous links to Russian security officials. In his only ever public interview last November, Gazprombank’s CEO, Andrei Akimov, confirmed longstanding rumors that a 29-year-old deputy vice rector at Moscow State University, was Russian president Vladimir Putin’s youngest daughter Ekaterina, then denied ever having said so.