REUTERS
The decision was taken at a meeting of the "Crimean government" on November 19.
De-facto authorities in Russia-occupied Crimea have written off more than UAH 130 million (US$4.7 million) in the so-called "public external debt of Crimea" before the National Bank of Ukraine (NBU) for bonds issued in 2011.
The decision was taken at a meeting of the "Crimean government" on November 19, according to the Crimean and Russian media.
Crimea's de-facto finance minister Irina Kiviko presented a motion to write off debt obligations worth RUB 505.4 million, the Krym.Realii media project reported on November 19, referring to the website of Russia's Finance Ministry in Crimea.
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"We have accumulated the debt on 133,000 local loan bonds of the Verkhovna Rada of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea (ARC) with a total nominal value of UAH 133 million; the bonds were issued in 2011," she said.
According to Kiviko, repayment on the bonds could have been received by August 1, 2018, by submitting an application for bond redemption. However, "no applications had been filed by bondholders."
Kiviko added that, according to the Crimean law on the budget, "a debt obligation on bonds that have not been claimed for redemption is considered fully repaid."
Russian-occupied Crimea's de facto head Sergey Aksyonov said "these are Cyprus bonds," according to the Russian news agency TASS.
Russia's Finance Ministry in Crimea in 2014 announced it had sent a letter to the National Bank of Ukraine on the provision of bondholders' registries with their bank details "which need to be credited with interest income to secure repayments on the 2011 ARC internal loan bonds."
Later, the Crimean authorities stated that "the National Bank of Ukraine is preventing Crimea from paying its debt obligations on the bonds."
According to the Russian-registered Crimean-based news agency Kryminform, the bonds were issued in accordance with the resolution of the Crimean parliament "for the implementation of an innovative environmental project in the collection and processing of solid household waste in Simferopol and Simferopol district."
In February 2018, Russia's Finance Ministry in Crimea announced the acceptance of applications for concluding agreements to settle financial claims related to the "repayment of the public external debt" of Crimea on the ARC Verkhovna Rada's local loan bonds issued in 2011.
The procedure for repayment of funds was established by a decision of the "Crimean government" on February 9, 2018.