The St. Petersburg Exchange, together with Freedom Holding and other professional participants in the stock market, is considering the possibility of creating a Russian-Kazakh hub in Kazakhstan in order to circumvent financial sanctions. This is reported by the publication Frank RG, citing sources familiar with the negotiations.

The Russian authorities are not directly involved in the project, but the publication claims that the Central Bank approved the idea, as this platform will attract foreign funding for the development of the Russian economy. It is planned to create a new site in the special tax zone of Kazakhstan - the Astana International Financial Center (AIFC). A full-fledged trading platform would help not only to attract capital to the Russian economy, but also to resume normal trading in foreign issuers, which is the key business of St. Petersburg.

“St. Petersburg Exchange has trading technologies, Freedom Holding has connections in Kazakhstan and a client base,” one of the interlocutors of the publication explains.

Among the project participants there may be foreign players - from Kazakhstan itself, as well as from China and even the United States. The AIFC, in this regard, looks like an ideal option, since it is a kind of offshore in Kazakhstan with a special tax regime. The Territory is governed by the case law applicable in the United Kingdom (the world standard for financial disputes). The AIFC already has one exchange - AIX, whose shareholders are Goldman Sachs, the Shanghai Stock Exchange, the Silk Road Fund and NASDAQ.

“Perhaps one day we will come to the conclusion that it will be forbidden to trade in foreign securities in Russia. Therefore, on the basis of the AIFC, it is possible to create an analogue of the St. Petersburg Stock Exchange and transfer there non-frozen securities that are now circulating on the Russian site, as well as listing new ones, ”say the interlocutors of the publication.

Russian brokers who already have or will specially create branches in Kazakhstan, Cyprus and other offshore zones will be able to connect to the new trading platform.

The need to create the St. Petersburg-Kazakhstan Exchange arose against the background of the disconnection of the Russian financial system from the international depositories Eurostream and Clearstream, as a result of which the assets of tens of thousands of clients remained frozen in the Russian link for the exchange of financial information - the National Settlement Depository (NSD), which fell under sanctions. Restrictive measures led to the freezing of about 6 trillion rubles of Russian investments.