Giorgi Kadagidze, Former President of the National Bank of Georgia (NBG) predicts that Russian government will have to close its commercial banks for several days from today. He has told that TV Formula, while evaluating the results of international economic sanctions.
Kadagidze declares, that Russia will have to take bank holidays.
"The Russian government already feels the effects of sanctions, but the Russian people will feel it from 28 February. My prediction is that Russia will have to close banking system for a few days and announce "bank holidays". "Otherwise, we will most likely see huge queues in front of banks and ATMs from 28 February, as they will try to exchange their savings in other currency, while the National Bank of Russia will not be able to use its frozen foreign exchange reserves," said Giorgi Kadagidze.
In addition, according to the former president of the NBG, capital markets in Russia will also collapse.
"Also, from 28 February the Russian capital markets will collapse, which means that the middle and upper class property and their capitalization will be halved. This is still a start," he said.
Some Russian banks are already cut off from Swift and the EU is freezing the CBR’s assets.