MOSCOW--Russia's largest banks said Thursday their clients' exposure to losses in Cyprus so far appears modest, while there were few other signs of immediate fallout for Russian business, executives and analysts said.

The Kremlin's angry public attacks last week on the planned tax on bank deposits in a tax haven long favored by Russians led many observers to suspect Russians' exposure to Cyprus's troubled banks was substantial. Estimates ran as high as 20 billion euros in Russian money said to be at risk.

But as Cyprus's banks re-opened Thursday after a two-week forced holiday, the immediate impact appeared to be limited.

"Up to now we haven't seen any issues with any of our customers due to Cyprus issue, and we're pretty sure that any direct or indirect influence is very minimal or doesn't exist at all," said Alexander Morozov, deputy chairman at OAO Sberbank (SBRCY, SBER.RS), by far Russia's largest bank.

Yuri Soloviev, deputy CEO at No. 2 bank VTB Group (VTBR.RS), said its Cypriot subsidiary and those of other Russian bankers are "sound" and will not suffer from the restructuring of the island's banking system.

Mikhail Fridman, chairman of Alfa Group, which owns a large bank as well as retail and telecoms companies, said the group's exposure is "at the most a couple of million dollars."

"We have very insignificant sums there. We never used any Cypriot banks, we just held some transit accounts, money for small administrative expenses on Cyprus," he said.

There was no immediate indication of any major Russian exposure to Cyprus Popular Bank (CPB.CP) and Bank of Cyprus (BOCY.CP), the two institutions that faced the worst losses.

Analysts said the capital controls that affect the entire banking system could have more impact on Russia, which depends heavily on Cyprus as a conduit for investment.

"Previously a lot of money was transferred back and forth via off-shores. Now it is possible that less money will return to Russia and capital inflows may suffer," said Eugene Tarzimanov at Moody's in Moscow.

"As capital restrictions...adopted in Cyprus to avoid massive fund outflows from banks after they open, funds of Russian banks could be frozen for a prolonged period. It may cause some problems with liquidity among a row of banks, which are likely to be solved with the help of the central bank of the finance ministry," analysts at Raiffeisen said.

Government officials said this week the crisis could boost capital outflows from Russia temporarily.

The controls could be "inconveniences" for VTB's clients there, he said. Clients who used the bank's subsidiary in Cyprus for trading operations may leave the island for other offshore zones in Europe.

Mr. Soloviev, whose VTB owns Russian Commercial Bank on Cyprus was opened to "business as usual Thursday" and didn't face any queues of customers willing to take out their money.

Mr. Soloviev said that while some customers had approached VTB's Cypriot bank with what he called "creative" ideas for bypassing the restrictions on transactions over the last two weeks, the bank refused. We are "law abiding and we don't break the letter and the spirit of capital controls," he said. Analysts and bankers suggest that Russian trading and mid-sized companies may face some difficulties, but so far there no signs of any large suffering.

Russia's First Deputy Prime Minister said earlier this week that the government has not received any signals that any of the corporations is in a tough situation in connection with the fact that money is frozen at the moment."We haven't received any calls form companies to assist them in connection with the situation," business ombudsman Boris Titov said, adding that although many companies kept securities on Cyprus, they rarely trusted Cyprus banks with cash.

However, Russian businessmen are unlikely to suffer much as they prefer keeping their funds in other banks, said Andrei Krylov, who runs construction firms and travel agencies both in Russia and Cyprus.

"I have many acquaintances who have their money frozen," Mr. Krylov said. "We have some particular losses, mostly because we can't increase our turnover at the moment. But even given all that we don't have any particular problems, we keep on working on confidential relations."

Some mid-sized businesses did suffer however, as they kept some money for day-to-day operations in Cyprus. Among them were a small Moscow publishing house specializing in intellectual non-fiction, and a small company managing hospitals in Russia's regions. None of these companies wanted their names to be mentioned.

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