Oleg Ustenko, a financial adviser to Zelenskyy, wrote to bankers including Jamie Dimon of JPMorgan Chase and Noel Quinn of HSBC, asking them to stop financing companies that trade Russian oil and sell shares in state oil and gas groups Gazprom and Rosneft. In the letters, seen by the Financial Times, which were sent this week and also went to Citigroup and Crédit Agricole, the banks were accused of “prolonging” the war by lending to companies transporting Russian oil and said they would be barred from participating their. in the post-war reconstruction of Ukraine. In an interview with the FT, Ustenko said Ukraine’s Justice Ministry plans to sue the banks at the International Criminal Court once the war ends, and that Ukraine’s security services are collecting information on financial institutions that support Russian fossil fuels. “In my view they are committing war crimes because they are helping the Putin regime in this particular way and supporting the regime,” he said, arguing that Russian oil and gas revenues fund the purchase of rockets and missiles used against Ukrainians. The ICC cannot investigate or prosecute governments or companies. However, it can investigate and expel individuals from these organizations. The asset management arms of HSBC and Crédit Agricole own stakes in Gazprom and Rosneft, Russia’s state oil and gas companies. Citigroup provides credit facilities to Russian oil and gas giant Lukoil and Vitol, which markets Russian oil, according to the letters. JPMorgan is extending credit lines to Vitol, while its investment trust Russian Securities owns stakes in Gazprom, Sberbank and Rosneft, described in the letter as some of the Kremlin’s most important financial assets. The Ukrainian government is particularly angry with JPMorgan after it published an analyst note warning that efforts to impose a price cap on Russian oil could drive global prices to a “stratospheric $380/barrel.” In the letter to Dimon, Ustenko said the memo was “scary, based on poor quality analysis” and also complained that it referred to the situation in Ukraine as a “crisis” rather than a Russian invasion. In a statement, JPMorgan said it played an active role in implementing Western sanctions. “Managing these evolving sanctions has been a huge undertaking for all global financial institutions, which have quickly and diligently applied multilateral sanctions against Russia’s major banks, its central bank, companies and individuals,” he added.

Citigroup and Crédit Agricole did not directly respond to Ustenko’s comments, but reiterated their earlier statements about suspending and normalizing operations in Russia. HSBC declined to comment. HSBC and Citigroup are in talks with potential buyers for their local businesses. Privately, the bankers noted that it was impossible to sell some of their Russian holdings because of sanctions or the suspension from trading of certain stocks. Vitol said it has cut its Russian oil operations by 80 percent since the invasion and that the remaining volumes comply with Western sanctions, which were designed to keep Russian oil flowing. Additional reporting by David Sheppard and Jane Croft in London