Bank24.ru keeps oppressing its own customers through a number of unfriendly policies. For one, the bank’s new tariff schemes provide for a 10% fine in case a customer wants to cash their deposit in before the end of the deposit period.

Since charging such a fee directly is actually illegitimate and violates the Russian Federation Civil Code, Bank24.ru appears to have found a way out by introducing a ‘hidden commission’. This means that upon signing a deposit agreement, a customer also has to sign an additional contract which states that, in case the customer chooses to get the money back before the end of the deposit period, the sum gets transferred into a special current account. Incidentally, there is a 10% commission for the transferal.

Moreover, Bank24.ru’s management reportedly admitted off the record that they did have such fines and commissions which they saw as ‘the price of the emergency’ of sorts.

As a matter of fact, Bank24.ru first introduced a similar 10% fine in October 2008, which, however, did not prevent the customers from withdrawing their savings from deposits. A week after the fine was launched, the bank stopped giving the money back to the customers altogether, while less a month later all the external transactions were done away with. As a result, the bank had to undergo financial recovery and merge with Life Group.