Greek firms open accounts in foreign banks

Thousands of enterprises and freelance professionals are turning to banks abroad to open new accounts so that they can conduct their transactions without any of the kinds of restrictions that the local credit system’s capital controls have imposed.

Banking sources say that in the last few weeks there have been thousands of applications for new accounts submitted to Cypriot, Bulgarian, Romanian, British and German lenders, not from major companies from Greece – which had already built their defenses – but from small and medium-sized Greek enterprises and freelancers.

According to a report by Germany’s Spiegel magazine, some 60,000 Greeks have in recent weeks opened bank accounts in Bulgaria.