Turkey is on its way to becoming a haven for Russian money. The oligarchs anchor their giant yachts on the Turkish shores, while young dissidents and tech professionals flee Moscow and arrive in the country with suitcases of cash.
Since Moscow launched its operation in Ukraine in February, thousands of Russians have left for Turkey, one of the few countries where they can still fly non-stop, and many are choosing to settle there. Some of them chose to settle in cosmopolitan Istanbul or in seaside towns like Antalya, which was already popular with Russian tourists before the war.
The Russians are circumventing by all sorts of methods the Western sanctions – which have excluded certain Russian banks from the Swift banking system – but also the controls on the movement of capital imposed by Moscow in order to limit the amounts that can leave the territory. Some of the more common techniques include Russian remittance companies also operating in Turkey, cryptocurrencies, or simply walking through airports with thousands of dollars in cash, according to Russians and Turks contacted in the context. of this article.
Three billion dollars in two days
The Turkish government has said it will not block the influx of Russian money, including from the oligarchs, as long as it is legally earned funds. Turkey is in desperate need of foreign currency since an economic crisis in 2021 caused its currency, the pound, to lose around 45% of its value against the dollar in less than three months.
Turkey’s central bank cashed in about $3 billion in just two days in mid-March,
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The Wall Street Journal (New York)It’s the business bible. But to be handled with care: on the one hand, high quality investigations and reports; on the other, editorial pages so partisan that they too often fall into the most flagrant bad faith.
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The electronic version of the journal is available in 6 editions in 3 languages (English, Chinese and Japanese). It is fed by 1,300 journalists in some fifty countries. Every day, nearly a thousand articles, most of which are paid for, are put online. With 1.7 million subscribers and 42 million visitors per month, it is the largest paying economic and financial information site on the web.
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