ING loaned hundreds of millions of euros to Russia between Crimea & Ukraine invasions

ING has lent hundreds of millions of euros to the Russian state since the invasion of Crimea and the downing of flight MH17 in 2014. As long as it wasn’t strictly prohibited, ING continued to lend increasingly large sums to the Russians, RTL Z reported after examining the annual accounts of ING’s Russian branch.

ING is currently in the advanced stages of selling its Russian bank, but in the 8 years before the the European Union increased sanctions against Russia in 2022, the Dutch bank continued to do extensive business with the Russian state and profited heavily from it.

Between 2014 and 2022, when Russia began its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, ING significantly increased its loans to the Russian state. In 2015, ING’s portfolio of Russian government bonds was worth a few million euros. By 2020, the Dutch bank had increased that to 280 million euros. And with annual interest rates of up to 8 percent, this generated millions for the bank.

“ING is contributing to Russian aggression,” Karel Burger Dirven, Ukraine’s first honorary consul in the Netherlands, told RTL Z. “They should have focused on extensification instead of intensification in 2014,” he said. “Every euro contributes to Russian aggression.”

Dutch politicians are also astonished by ING’s choice to loan increasingly large amounts to Russia. “In doing so, the bank contributed to financing Putin’s war machine,” D66 MP Jan Paternotte told the broadcaster. “That ING has still not fully phased out its activities in Russia, over three years after the major invasion of Ukraine, is truly incomprehensible. We will ask the Cabinet how this can be accelerated, so that Dutch banks no longer serve Putin.”

“This demonstrates once again how capital operates, and how it has no morals,” said SP parliamentarian Sarah Dobbe. “That ING is contributing to Russia’s war economy in this way is absurd and unacceptable. Money is being made at the expense of people, regardless of the consequences. The power capital, now the bank, should not trump international law or the prevention or stopping of a war in which the working class dies in the trenches.”

“If this is true, it is worrisome,” said VVD MP Eric van der Burg. “Banks have a moral obligation. We must investigate this carefully, so we will be in discussions with the Minister.”