OREANDA-NEWS. March 25, 2013. Vasily Titov, First Deputy President and Chairman of VTB Bank Management Board:

The measures proposed by the Cypriot authorities in effect amount to an attempt to bail out individual banks at the expense of others.

Russian Commercial Bank (Cyprus) is a healthy financial organisation. It is the third-largest bank in Cyprus by assets, and employs 249 people, including 78 Cypriot citizens. Last year it reported a profit of almost EUR 100 million, and had assets of about EUR 14 billion. The bank does not need either additional capital or liquidity.

I am therefore confident that the proposed seizure of funds from healthy banks and their clients and the subsequent redistribution of these funds to institutions experiencing serious problems is extremely unfair.

Cyprus’s desire to deal with its own problems through partial expropriation will clearly lead nowhere. Should such inappropriate decisions be taken, VTB will of course reconsider its policy of maintaining a presence in Cyprus.