Sparkasse KoelnBonn restricted online banking and card functions on about 2,000 accounts of Russian and Belarusian nationals who did not supply proof of EU residence status.
About 4,000 of Sparkasse KoelnBonn's roughly 835,000 customers were initially affected, and the bank wrote to them asking for proof such as a copy of a residence title. Around 2,000 complied within the deadline and kept unrestricted use of their accounts. That left about 2,000 Russian and Belarusian customers with restricted card and payment functions on their current accounts.
For them the bank blocked online banking, deactivated debit cards for e-commerce transactions and set the credit card limit to zero euros. Transfers and direct debits at self-service terminals, and cash withdrawals and deposits, remained possible. Restrictions are lifted once proof of residence status is submitted.
The Cologne local desk of t-online reported this on 8 May 2026. A spokeswoman for the institution confirmed it on request and cited two EU regulations from the 19th sanctions package against Russia and Belarus as the basis. She said there had in principle been no complete account blocks. According to the spokeswoman the measures applied only to Russian and Belarusian nationals who hold neither a temporary nor a permanent residence title in an EU or EEA member state or Switzerland and who hold no citizenship of such a state. No individual finding against any affected customer is reported.
Two days earlier the Rheinische Post had reported the same practice at Stadtsparkasse Duesseldorf. Citing that report, t-online wrote that the German Savings Banks and Giro Association said banks had no room for discretion in the matter, and that the Bundesbank and the Federal Ministry of Finance were reported to have said something similar. That Rheinische Post article of 6 May 2026 concerns Duesseldorf, not Cologne, and is paywalled: https://rp-online.de/nrw/staedte/duesseldorf/stadtsparkasse-duesseldorf-konten-russischer-kunden-gesperrt_aid-147636485
Legal context added by the archive from EUR-Lex and the European Commission, not taken from t-online. The 19th package comprises Council Regulation (EU) 2025/2033 (Russia) and Council Regulation (EU) 2025/2037 (Belarus), adopted 23 October 2025 and published 3 November 2025. The amended Article 5b(2) of Regulation (EU) No 833/2014 prohibits providing Russian nationals and persons resident in Russia with crypto-asset services, the issuing of payment instruments, the acquiring of payment transactions, payment initiation services (PSD2 Annex I, points 5 and 7) and the issuing of e-money. Article 5b(3) exempts nationals of a Member State, an EEA state or Switzerland and holders of a temporary or permanent residence permit there.
The Commission's published FAQ on Article 5b(2), as of 13 March 2026, states three things. The provision does not prohibit access to online or mobile banking, because Article 5c(1a) exempts the provision of personalized security credentials needed to access an existing account (Q9). It does not prohibit continued use of existing payment instruments and does not require EU operators to cancel or freeze them; the prohibition covers issuing, renewal and re-issuing, and any block on a transaction rests on the acquirer rather than the issuer (Q7). It does not require operators to close accounts or terminate existing contracts (Q5). That FAQ is Commission guidance, not binding law, is not a ruling about this bank or these accounts, and addresses the Russia regulation; the archive has not verified the text of the Belarus counterpart. FAQ landing page: https://finance.ec.europa.eu/publications/provision-payments-services_en
Source note: t-online, Cologne local desk (Philip Buchen and Katrin Krause), article id_101247150, published 8 May 2026, page updated 17 May 2026 and displaying only the update date. The article is served under several headline slugs, so the article ID is the durable identifier: https://koeln.t-online.de/region/koeln/id_101247150/sparkasse-koeln-bonn-schraenkt-konten-von-hunderten-russen-ein-.html The headline refers to "hundreds" of Russians and does not mention Belarusian customers; the figure of about 2,000 and the inclusion of Belarusian customers come from the article text and the spokeswoman's confirmation. The article said it would be updated if a Kreissparkasse Koeln statement arrived; none had been appended.
Sources
Where it stands
Contested and ongoing. Andrea Burghard, a specialist lawyer for banking and capital markets law, told the Rheinische Post that EU law has permitted banks to freeze Russian citizens' deposits in Germany since 2022, but that an account block requires a concrete occasion, that is an individual suspicion; that a Russian passport alone is not sufficient; and that the conditions for freezing were not met in the cases described. The savings bank supervisory authority at the state finance ministry said it knew of no precautionary blocks. As of 5 September 2026 no follow-up reporting, court decision, supervisory finding or correction reversing or modifying these restrictions has been found, and the source has issued no correction.