UPDATE 1-Serbia will allow payments and transactions for Russian oil firm NIS this week

Serbia risks secondary sanctions if its banks, including the central bank, maintain payments with NIS, but Vucic said that these payments would continue until Monday. "We have agreed, at the risk of Serbia, to ensure payment transactions with NIS until the end of the week ...

Serbia's President Aleksandar Vucic said on Tuesday that the government will allow payments and transactions for the U.S.-sanctioned Russian-owned oil company NIS until the end of the week, despite the risk of secondary sanctions itself.

Russia's Gazprom Neft and Gazprom, which own a majority stake in NIS, must dispose of their ownership in the company, which is under U.S. sanctions because of its Russian ownership. Serbia risks secondary sanctions if its banks, including the central bank, maintain payments with NIS, but Vucic said that these payments would continue until Monday.

"We have agreed, at the risk of Serbia, to ensure payment transactions with NIS until the end of the week ... to allow NIS to pay workers, make due payments," he said after meeting government officials in charge of energy. Vucic said the country's NIS-owned and only oil refinery will have to shut down this week unless the company receives a sanctions reprieve from the U.S. Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC).

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