The largest western banks that remain in Russia paid the Kremlin more than €800mn of taxes last year, a fourfold increase on prewar levels, despite promises to minimise their Russian exposure after the full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

The seven top European banks by assets in Russia — Raiffeisen Bank International, UniCredit, ING, Commerzbank, Deutsche Bank, Intesa Sanpaolo and OTP — reported a combined profit of more than €3bn in 2023.

Those profits were three times more than in 2021 and were partly generated by funds that the banks cannot withdraw from the country.

The jump in profitability resulted in the European banks paying about €800mn in tax, up from €200mn in 2021, an analysis by the Financial Times shows. It came in addition to profits at US lenders such as Citigroup and JPMorgan.

The taxes paid by European banks, equivalent to about 0.4 per cent of all Russia’s expected non-energy budget revenues for 2024, are an example of how foreign companies remaining in the country help the Kremlin maintain financial stability despite western sanctions.

The foreign lenders have benefited not just from higher interest rates but also from international sanctions on Russian banks. Such measures have deprived their rivals’ access to international payments systems and increased western banks’ own appeal to clients in the country.

More than half of the European banks’ €800mn tax payments correspond to Austria’s Raiffeisen Bank International, which has the largest presence in Russia of the foreign lenders.

RBI’s Russian profits more than tripled to €1.8bn between 2021 and 2023, accounting for half of the Austrian group’s total profit, compared with about a third before the war.

In addition to regular tax contributions in 2023, Raiffeisen paid €47mn as the result of a windfall levy the Kremlin imposed on some companies last year.

After President Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, RBI repeatedly voiced its plan to downsize and divest its operations in Russia. It has faced persistent criticism from the European Central Bank and the US Treasury department for not yet completing the withdrawal.

Although RBI has made some efforts to reduce its Russian exposure — such as a 56 per cent decrease in its loan book since early 2022 — some measures point to the contrary.

Recent job postings by RBI in Russia suggest ambitious plans for “multiple expansion of the active client base”, the FT has reported.

Deutsche Bank, Hungary’s OTP and Commerzbank had significantly reduced their presence in Russia, which was already small compared with RBI, their representatives said. Intesa is the closest to exiting but has yet to sell its Russian business. UniCredit declined to comment.

Despite closing its corporate and retail business, Citigroup, the US’s fourth-largest lender, which earned $149mn profit and paid $53mn in Russia in 2023, became the fourth-biggest taxpayer among western banks in Russia, according to the Kyiv School of Economics’ calculations based on Russian Central Bank data.

Another American giant, JPMorgan, earned $35mn and paid $6.8mn in taxes, according to the research institution.

JPMorgan, once the main contractor of Russian banks for opening correspondent accounts in US dollars, has been trying to leave since 2022. The bank is now stuck and facing a multimillion-dollar lawsuit from its former partner in Russia, VTB.

The US banks’ figures are not included in the €800mn total as they do not report comparable Russian results on the group accounts used for the FT calculations.

Western lenders have benefited from the imposition of sanctions on most of the Russian financial sector, which has denied access to the Swift international interbank payment system. That made international banks a financial lifeline between Moscow and the west.

Such factors contributed to RBI’s net fee and commission income in Russia increasing threefold from €420mn in 2021 to €1.2bn in 2023.

“It is not only in RBI’s interest to stay in Russia. The [Russian central bank] will do everything it can to not let them go because there are few non-sanctioned banks through which Russia can receive and send Swift payments,” a senior Russian banking executive said.

The central bank did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

According to the executive, Russian and foreign counterparties now often settle cross-border payments in roubles, but the Russian currency also goes through accounts at RBI and similar banks “to reduce sanctions risk” and “speed up the process”.

The international banks’ combined revenue, profit and tax figures have fallen since 2022 but remain much higher than prewar results.

The banks have also benefited from interest rate rises with the Russian central bank’s key rate now at 16 per cent, almost two times higher than before the war.

The rate increases have helped the lenders earn bumper revenues from their floating-rate loans and accumulate extra income from funds trapped in Russian deposit accounts.

The banks cannot access cash earned in Russia due to regulatory restrictions imposed in 2022 that prohibited dividend payouts from Russian subsidiaries to businesses from “unfriendly” western countries.

“We can’t do anything with Russian deposits apart from keeping them with the central bank. So as interest rates went up, so did our profits,” a senior executive at a European bank with a Russian subsidiary said.

About 20 per cent of the tax payments to the Russian budget in 2023 made by OTP consisted of taxes on dividends, the bank said. Much of its funds remain stuck in deposit accounts in Russia, it added.

Locked-up cash presents a significant obstacle to exiting Russia. Since early 2022 the banks have also required personal authorisation by President Vladimir Putin for the sale of their Russian operations.

Only seven western banks — out of 45 included in the list of those in need of presidential approval to exit — have received such an authorisation, including Mercedes-Benz Bank and Intesa.

Candace Parker #3 of the Las Vegas Aces is pictured at Michelob Ultra Arena on July 1, 2023 in Las Vegas. Parker announced her retirement on Sunday.

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Candace Parker #3 of the Las Vegas Aces is pictured at Michelob Ultra Arena on July 1, 2023 in Las Vegas. Parker announced her retirement on Sunday.

Ethan Miller/Getty Images

Candace Parker — a three-time WNBA champion, two-time league MVP and two-time Olympic gold medalist — has announced she’s retiring from basketball after 16 seasons.

In a post on Instagram, Parker said, “I promised I’d never cheat the game & that I’d leave it in a better place than I came into it. The competitor in me always wants 1 more, but it’s time. My HEART & body knew, but I needed to give my mind time to accept it.”

The 38-year-old had a foot injury that sidelined her last season. She’d hoped to return to the Las Vegas Aces this upcoming year to try to win another title.

“This offseason hasn’t been fun on a foot that isn’t cooperating. It’s no fun playing in pain (10 surgeries in my career) it’s no fun knowing what you could do, if only…it’s no fun hearing ‘she isn’t the same’ when I know why, it’s no fun accepting the fact you need surgery AGAIN.”

Parker played her first 13 seasons with the Los Angeles Sparks — and, in 2008, was the first in WNBA history to be named Rookie of the Year and Most Valuable Player in the same season. She was named MVP again in 2013. She won titles with the Sparks, Chicago Sky and the Las Vegas Aces. She’s the only player in league history to win championships with three teams.

Parker won two NCAA titles while playing for famed collegiate coach Pat Summitt at the University of Tennessee. As a freshman in 2006, Parker became the first woman to slam dunk in an NCAA tournament game.

She helped Team USA win Olympic gold medals at the Beijing Olympics in 2008 and at the London Games in 2012.

“Your place in sports history is cemented,” said sports journalist Jemele Hill. “While I’m going to miss seeing you on the court, what you’ve done for the game is a big reason the game is as healthy as it is.”

Moments after Parker made the announcement, the Las Vegas Aces posted a tribute video for the WNBA star.

Parker says she’ll continue to work in broadcasting and one day hopes to own both an NBA and WNBA team.

Rishi Sunak will face a challenge to his leadership if the Conservatives suffer heavy losses and lose high-profile mayors in Thursday’s local elections, rightwing Tory rebels have claimed.

Most Conservative MPs believe the prime minister would survive even a terrible set of results on May 2 because there is no viable alternative and a general election is around the corner.

“There will just be sullen grumpiness all round,” said one former cabinet minister.

James Cleverly, home secretary, warned the Tory rebels last Thursday that trying to remove Sunak would be a “catastrophic idea” and compared a putative putsch with jumping out of a plane without a parachute.

But a group of Conservative MPs and ex-officials, including diehard supporters of ex-premiers Boris Johnson and Liz Truss, say they will launch one final bid to try to topple Sunak.

Speaking anonymously, the Tory rebels told the Financial Times that a plan has been drawn up to destabilise or oust Sunak once the results of the local elections in England and Wales have been announced.

On Sunday, the rebels threw down the gauntlet to Sunak with a five-point policy plan, setting out proposals to end junior doctors’ strikes with a more generous pay offer, introduce tougher migration measures, increase defence spending to 3 per cent of gross domestic product by 2027, toughen sentences for prolific offenders, and cut the welfare bill.

The plotters set out the 100-day plan as a blueprint of “quick wins” that could be adopted by Sunak’s successor if the rebels manage to successfully topple him.

The threat of a coup attempt has created a febrile atmosphere at Westminster with speculation that Sunak could soon name the date for a general election to head off the danger.

Plotters claim there is a whipping operation to try to muster the 52 letters that must be sent by Tory MPs to Conservative grandees in order to trigger a no-confidence vote in Sunak.

“The polls and focus groups that have gone round show that nothing Rishi does matters,” said one Conservative rebel. “It’s not the policy, it’s the messenger. People just don’t like the guy.”

Sunak repeatedly declined to rule out a July election in an interview with Sky on Sunday. “I’m not going to do that,” he said.

In comments referring to his previous remark that an election in the second half of 2024 was his “working assumption”, he added: “[It’s] the same thing I’ve said all year.”

A Downing Street insider insisted Sunak was still “planning for an autumn election”, dismissing rumours of an early poll as “complete nonsense” being spread by Labour party mischief-makers.

A rightwing Tory MP, who denied being part of any plot, predicted that some in the party would move against Sunak after the local elections and would rally around any alternative would-be leader capable of “stemming the bloodshed”.

“Over the Easter recess, colleagues spent more time on the ground in their seats and got a better sense of how bad things are,” said the MP.

On Saturday, Dan Poulter, the Tory MP for Central Suffolk and North Ipswich and a former minister, defected to Labour.

Many Conservative MPs refer to talk of a possible coup as “mad”, but they accept that Sunak could face fresh Conservative infighting after the local elections.

Colin Rallings and Michael Thrasher, local elections experts at Plymouth University, have predicted the Tories could lose 500 of the roughly 900 council seats they are defending, which would be a serious setback.

Sunak’s allies are particularly focused on whether the party can win any of the high-profile mayoralties up for grabs – notably London, the West Midlands and Tees Valley.

Sadiq Khan, London’s Labour mayor, is expected to win a third term. But Andy Street, Tory mayor of West Midlands, and Lord Ben Houchen, Conservative mayor of Tees Valley, are in hard-fought battles with Labour.

Tory grandees believe Street and Houchen can prove that Tories can still win — in spite of the party trailing Labour by about 20 percentage points or more in national opinion polls — and that will buy Sunak some breathing space.

The prime minister’s team is doing its best to keep potentially mutinous MPs away from Westminster, where plotting is often rife in the Gothic palace’s corridors and bars.

A May bank holiday recess begins on May 2, with the House of Commons not resuming until May 7. Even after that, MPs expect only “light whipping” for the rest of the week, meaning that some will stay away.

The idea of Tory MPs replacing Sunak with a fourth leader in a single parliament, following Johnson and Truss – and just months before an election – is seen by most Conservative MPs as unconscionable.

The absence of a viable alternative to Sunak is a problem facing the rebels, even if some posit Penny Mordaunt, leader of the Commons, as a compromise candidate.

Mordaunt, who faces a struggle to hold on to her Portsmouth North seat at the election, insists her name is often mentioned by people who want to damage her. “The public are so tired of this,” she has told friends.

Sunak’s allies insist the prime minister’s success in finally securing royal assent for his Rwanda asylum bill, which underpins the government’s strategy to curb illegal migration, and his promise to boost defence spending, has shown he is on the front foot and up for the fight.

Cleverly warned Tory rebels not to “feed the psychodrama”. He told a Westminster press lunch: “We should have the discipline to stay focused on what we’ve achieved in government and what we’re planning to do next.”

One former minister loyal to Sunak said: “There’s no sense that there are anywhere near enough mad MPs to attempt to send the Tory party into the guaranteed death spiral that a sword-wielding leadership upheaval would bring.”

Join Lucy Fisher, George Parker and colleagues for an FT subscriber webinar on May 8 to examine the national fallout from the local elections. Register now at ft.com/ukwebinar.