Singapore will enforce preemptive sanctions in place, according to a former government official, which is the first time in years that the city-state has sanctioned a foreign country without the support of the United Nations Security Council.
As per a statement released by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Saturday, punitive measures also include implementation of export restrictions on products that can be used as firearms, aimed financial metrics on assigned Russian banks, and limitations on crypto transactions that can be used to bypass economic sanctions.
This is a worrying development for a tiny state like Singapore, not a conceptual principle. As a result, Singapore publicly criticized Russia’s unprovoked assault on Ukraine.
Singapore’s financial firms are also barred from offering services that would assist Russia’s government in raising additional capital. Singapore’s trade in goods with Russia is expected to be around S$5 billion ($3.7 billion) in 2021, according to an email from a Ministry of Trade and Industry spokesperson, with imported goods from Russia and Ukraine accounting for 0.8 percent of total imports to the city-state. GIC Pte., Singapore’s investment fund, announced on Saturday that it will no longer invest government funds in newly issued Russian sovereign and central bank loans.
GIC proceeds to assess the Russian-Ukrainian scenario and will make sure that all relevant regulations and laws are followed. In the utter lack of binding UN Security Council approval, the small island nation hardly ever placed sanctions on other nations, with Foreign Minister Vivian Balakrishnan having to tell parliament on Feb. 28 that Russia’s show of strength poses a threat to world order that would be deeply injurious to the survival and wellbeing of small states.
Singapore’s largest banks have already limited trade financing for Russian raw resources, including a moratorium on issuing letters of credit in US dollars for deals made for oil and liquefied natural gas. In the meantime, Singapore Airlines has halted all return flights to Moscow for operational reasons.
Thus far, the city-state seems to be the only Southeast Asian nation to enforce sanctions against Russia, despite the fact that 7 of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations’ ten members voted to criticize Russia’s incursion of Ukraine at the United Nations General Assembly on Wednesday. Laos and Vietnam voted no.
Regional powers are concerned about the potential consequences of the war, with Asean foreign ministers calling for an “immediate ceasefire” on Wednesday.
The United States, the United Kingdom, the European Union, and other Asian countries have also increased sanctions against Russia in an attempt to isolate the country.
A regulatory official said Friday that Japan’s financial regulator and the country’s cryptocurrency industry body had begun discussions about how to effectively enforce sanctions against Russia. In addition, a group of key U.S. senators this week questioned what the Treasury Department is doing to make sure that digital currencies are not being used to circumvent sanctions against Russia.
Nonetheless, some crypto entities claim to be seeing slight proof of such problems at the time.
