Sberbank has reported another jump in profit, on course to pay a dividend even bigger than the record one it handed shareholders earlier this summer. Shareholders in the European Union, the United States, and every other country Moscow calls “unfriendly” will not see a ruble of it.
The bank earned more than 1 trillion rubles ($12 billion) in the first half of 2026 alone, up nearly a fifth on the year, a gain in an economy the Central Bank of Russia itself describes as only moderate after a downturn at the start of the year.
For a shareholder in New York or Frankfurt, none of it is money he can spend.
Full-year profit hit a third straight record in 2025. Sberbank pays out half its profit, and the dividend it set for 2025 was already the biggest it had ever paid.
For a shareholder in New York or Frankfurt, none of it is money he can spend. About a quarter of the 2024 payout was set aside in restricted “type-C” accounts for holders from “unfriendly” countries, and nothing has changed since: the dividend is credited to him and then locked.
The Russian state, which owns just over half of Sberbank, faces no such block. It collects roughly half of every payout, while its budget deficit runs past 6 trillion rubles ($71 billion) in five months.
The market moves the other way
The records are landing on a market that has barely moved in four years. The MOEX index, the main gauge of the Moscow Exchange, had fallen 17 straight weeks by mid-July, its longest losing streak since 1997, back near where it stood the week Russia launched its full-scale invasion in February 2022; anyone who bought Russian shares at the start of the war has made almost nothing since.
Sberbank yields more than 10% on paper, but the stock has fallen about 14% over the past year, so the record dividend does not even cover the price drop, and the foreign holder takes that loss without the payout that might soften it.
Moscow keeps tightening the lock
Russia built the type-C system in 2022 as a countermeasure to Western sanctions that froze its reserves abroad, and officials say the money stays until those reserves are freed.
Within that system, dividends owed to “unfriendly” foreigners are deposited into blocked ruble accounts that they can spend only on Russian taxes, government bonds, and fees.
In June 2026, the block reached ordinary bank deposits after a few words were added to the founding decree: “bank deposits (deposits).” Repayments and interest above 10 million rubles (about $120,000) a month now go the same way.
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One court opens a crack
In a ruling dated 14 April 2025, the Supreme Court held that a bank cannot refuse to swap an investor’s frozen depositary receipts—certificates that stand in for shares held abroad—for the actual Russian shares, merely because those securities sit in a blocked type-C account.
A Moscow court then sided with the investor, Vladimir Pelevin, and fined Raiffeisenbank for the delay. The ruling allows a holder to swap receipts for shares, but it does not affect the dividends those shares pay, which still land in type-C.
A compensation scheme, based on a March 2024 decree, pays out only when no “unfriendly” foreigner is anywhere in the ownership chain.
A draft law before Russian lawmakers would allow the state to seize the balances in type-C accounts outright. The decree that created them, in 2022, is titled “On the temporary procedure.”
