Actually, we contacted Unicredit during the summer and they had zero interest to work with us and provide an account for our company. Maybe if you have big big business, they might help you out, but for us, the answer was strict︀ no, even with the recommendation from the other party. They are also trying to sell︁ their Russian operation, so probably makes sense for them not to onboard any new high-risk︂ clients if they try to erase Russia from their portfolio.
The only thing they care about is that the recipient of︋ the money is our company. They recently made a change to the agreement, that we︌ could also accept money through some payment service providers " transfer of funds can be︍ carried out using the Payment Service Provider" but unfortunately they still do not accept some︎ third party companies (for example my friend's company) in Russia to accept the money and️ send it to us. The third party needs to be an actual payment service provider, for example, something like PayPal.
Yeah, this is what legit lawyers told me when I visited Yerevan.︁
Will think about it, there are definitely some countries that could be interesting (the︄ ease of opening a business and bank account).
I've been thinking about Dubai (also relocating there) but after hearing the horror︈ stories from people involved in trade with Russia and trying to open company bank accounts,︉ I will wait and see how the situation develops. I'm not Russian myself so I︊ don't really care about the aspect of the language but the truth is that it︋ is much easier to do business with Russia from CIS countries or Turkey, than it︌ is from Western or even middle-eastern countries. Georgia seems quite in between for now. They︍ have so much money coming in from Russia and the government likes it, so I︎ guess the banks have to play along a bit too, even though almost every bank️ has denied us so far (have business accounts in two banks currently).
