Maria Zurabova, a US citizen and a Florida resident, is suing the American payment platform Square Inc. for a refusal to process her payment for diamonds and jewelry she bought with credit cards linked to Russian banks.
According to the lawsuit, Zurabova bought diamonds worth $645,000 at Royal Star Inc. in New York about a year ago. She claims she never got the gems she paid for, and Square will not return her money after concluding the purchase would violate US sanctions on Russian banks.
Zurabova says she made the purchases using cards linked to Russian banks, including Alfa bank. She has accounts there, she explained to the court, since she used to travel to Russia before the invasion of Ukraine.
According to the complaint, “Despite the fact that none of the sanctions affected Zurabova’s transactions, Square claimed that Alfa Bank was sanctioned and that therefore it could not process Zurabova’s purchase.”
However, Zurabova claims that Alfa-Bank was included in sanctions issued on March 26, 2022 – which is more than two weeks after the purchase. Since then, she says, Square refused to process the payment – neither transferring the money to the merchant nor returning them to her.
