The US Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) has threatened other countries that the opening of branches or subsidiaries of Russian banks abroad could be an attempt by Russia to evade sanctions imposed over the war in Ukraine.

OFAC warned foreign banks to exercise caution when dealing with newly opened foreign branches or subsidiaries of Russian financial institutions.

This warning includes entities not subject to US sanctions.

Foreign financial institutions dealing with such branches or affiliates should consider that they present significant sanctions risks, including account services, funds transfers or payments, trade finance, and other services such as insurance,’ the statement said.

However, it noted that transactions related to food, agriculture, medicine, energy, and telecommunications are still permitted activities.

OFAC stressed that the Treasury Department ‘has a number of tools at its disposal to thwart Russia’s attempts to finance its defence industry’. One such tool is the Bank Secrecy Act (BSA).

In 2021, the US amended the BSA to empower US regulators to request information from foreign banks with correspondent accounts in the US about any account, including information stored overseas, as part of investigations.

“OFAC’s new warning will lead to an expansion of the practice of closing accounts and suspending other related financial services,” said investment banker Yevgeny Kogan on his Telegram channel.

“The US Treasury has scared everyone so much that it now resembles racial discrimination. There are cases of reluctance to do business with people who do not live or work in Russia, but who also have a Russian passport or whose place of birth is listed in foreign citizenship as the Russian Federation/USSR,” Kogan added.

The United States has seized Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro’s plane after determining that its purchase violated US sanctions, among other “criminal matters”. The plane, seized in the Dominican Republic, was flown to Florida on Monday, two US officials said.

This sends a message all the way to the top,’ one of the US officials told CNN. The seizure of a foreign head of state’s plane is unheard of in criminal cases. We are sending a clear message here that no one is above the law, no one is above the reach of US sanctions,’ a US official told CNN.

The plane, described by officials as Venezuela’s equivalent of Air Force One, has also been seen during Maduro’s previous state visits around the world.

Dominican Republic President Luis Abinader said the plane seized by the US on Monday was registered ‘in the name of an individual’ and not the Venezuelan government.

Dominican Foreign Minister Roberto Álvarez said the country’s attorney general’s office had received an order from a national court last May to ‘immobilise’ the plane.

The minister said the US had requested the aircraft’s immobilisation in order to search for ‘evidence and objects related to fraudulent activities, smuggling of goods for illegal activities and money laundering’.

The Department of Justice has seized an aircraft that we allege was illegally purchased for $13 million through a shell company and smuggled out of the US for use by Nicolás Maduro and his cronies,’ US Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a statement.

The Department of Justice alleged that the aircraft, a Dassault Falcon 900EX, was purchased from a company in Florida and illegally exported from the US to Venezuela via the Caribbean in April 2023.

According to the Justice Department, the plane was used for Maduro’s international travel and “flew almost exclusively to and from a military base in Venezuela”.

The aircraft was seized for violations of U.S. sanctions against Venezuela and other criminal matters related to this aircraft that we are still investigating,’ Anthony Salisbury, special agent in charge of Homeland Security Investigations, told CNN.

A senior official in the Dominican Republic told CNN that Maduro’s plane was undergoing maintenance on Dominican territory at the time it was seized by US authorities.

The source added that the government had no record of Maduro’s private plane being in the country until it was seized.

According to one of the US officials, US authorities worked closely with the Dominican Republic, which notified Venezuela that the plane had been seized.

According to US officials, several federal agencies were involved in the seizure of the plane, including Homeland Security Investigations, Commerce agents, the Bureau of Industry and Security, and the Department of Justice.

Records show that the plane’s last registered flight was from Caracas to the Dominican capital, Santo Domingo, in March.

In a statement on Monday, the Venezuelan government described the seizure as ‘piracy’ and accused Washington of stepping up its ‘aggression’ against Maduro’s government following July’s presidential election.

Once again, in a recurring criminal practice that can only be described as piracy, the US authorities have illegally seized an aircraft used by the President of the Republic, justifying their action with the coercive measures they have illegally and unilaterally imposed around the world,’ the statement said.

The US has shown that it uses its economic and military power to intimidate and pressure states like the Dominican Republic to serve as ‘accomplices in criminal acts’, Venezuela said, adding that what had happened was ‘an example of the so-called ‘rules-based order’, which seeks to establish the law of the strongest in defiance of international law’.

The Federal Reserve’s preferred measure of inflation held steady at 2.5 per cent in the 12 months to July, according to data released on Friday that could pave the way for the Fed to start cutting interest rates next month.

The Fed’s target for the headline personal consumption expenditure (PCE) index is 2 per cent annually. Core PCE, which strips out volatile food and energy costs, came in at 2.6 per cent, below expectations of 2.7 per cent.

The figures from the Commerce Department came after Fed chairman Jay Powell said last week that it was “time” to start cutting interest rates as inflation fell and the labour market slowed.

The core PCE data, which is expected after yesterday’s strong US growth data, plays an important role in the Fed’s assessment of inflation.

In the US, personal spending rose by 0.5% in July, in line with expectations, and personal income rose by 0.3%, slightly above expectations of 0.2%.

Core PCE measures the rate of inflation faced by consumers when purchasing goods and services, excluding food and energy prices.

US government bond prices fell slightly following the release of the data. The yield on the two-year Treasury note, which rises when prices fall, rose 0.03 percentage point during the day to 3.92%. The S&P 500 was up 0.7% shortly after the opening bell on Wall Street.

Eurozone inflation fell sharply in August to 2.2 per cent, the lowest level in three years.

The rate reinforced expectations that the European Central Bank (ECB) will cut interest rates next month.

Friday’s preliminary figure was in line with the 2.2 per cent forecast in a Reuters poll and below last month’s rate of 2.6 per cent.

The Eurostat data came after Germany and Spain this week reported sharper-than-expected declines in August.

France also reported on Friday that inflation fell to 2.2 per cent, but the figure was higher than expected and some economists attributed the drop to price pressures from the Paris Olympics.