Azerbaijan, Baku, Aug. 27 / Trend A. Akhundov /
The Azerbaijan Deposit Insurance Fund (ADIF) has paid compensation to cover more than 73 per cent of the physical entities' insured deposits in the bankrupt RoyalBank through three agent banks, ADIF executive director Azad Javadov told the media on Monday.
"Three agent banks chosen by ADIF to pay compensation to RoyalBank's insured depositors, have paid 11 million manat since Aug. 1," Javadov said.
He said the fund reassessed a total sum of compensation is to be paid to the bank's depositors.
"Earlier, we planned to pay 16 million manat, but now the amount is reduced to 14.9 million manat," Javadov said.
He added that Azerbaijani citizens who have invested money in manat, are those mainly appealing for compensation.
"Non-residents mainly receive compensation in a foreign currency, while Azerbaijani citizens are paid out in the national currency," he said. "More than 80 per cent of deposits in the manat have been returned. Depositors do not appear to hurry to apply for compensation in foreign currency."
The compensation is being paid through the Muganbank, Bank Respublika and Agbank where special working groups have been created. The accounts of depositors in 33 RoyalBank branches will be served by 27 branches of the three agent banks.
Cavadov said that at present, about 1100 of 7000 depositors had received compensation.
"About 2000 deposits do not exceed 100 manat, so there are a few people willing to get compensation," he added. Roughly 15-20 people appeal per day." The process of payments will run until July 20, 2013.
The deposits in ADIF member banks at an annual interest rate of over 12 per cent, are not insured by the fund and the compensation is not envisaged.
At present, the maximum level of insurance coverage for the deposit is 30,000 manat.
The licence for banking activities of the Royal Bank was withdrawn by the Central Bank of Azerbaijan (CBA) on July 12. On July 16, the closure of Royal Bank was officially recognised as an insurance case and moratorium was applied to fulfil its obligations to depositors.
RoyalBank was declared bankrupt and proceedings began in accordance with the decision of the administrative and economic Baku Court N1 on July 25. The Azerbaijan Consulting Company was declared the liquidator of the bank.
The official exchange rate is 0.7854 AZN/USD on Aug. 27.