Russia may compensate retail investors for sanctions-related losses

MOSCOW (Reuters) -Russia’s central bank is in talks with banks about creating a fund to compensate retail investors for losses when their foreign security investments were frozen by Western sanctions, Governor Elvira Nabiullina said on Thursday.

“It is possible that income from non-residents’ funds that we, for our part, have frozen” could be used to “compensate many investors”, Nabiullina said.

Russia’s banking system has been hit hard by Western sanctions imposed after Moscow ordered tens of thousands of troops into Ukraine on Feb. 24.

The central bank said earlier this week it planned to gradually limit access for non-qualified retail investors to foreign shares issued by companies from designated “unfriendly” countries.

(Reporting by Andrey Ostroukh; Writing by Felix Light; Editing by Jon Boyle and Mark Potter)