Via The Telegraph - Jeroen Dijsselbloem, Dutch Chairman of the Eurozone announced yesterday that the raid on Cyprus bank accounts should be the template for future bank crises among the EU countries.

The announcement sent panic amid markets in Italy and Spain. The two countries could very well need the next bailout as recession and heavy debt plague both countries. Like the Russians in Cyprus, British investors are at high risk should a rescue occur in either country.

Ditching a three-year-old policy of protecting senior bondholders and large depositors, over €100,000, in banks, Mr Dijsselbloem argued that the lack of market contagion surrounding Cyprus showed that private investors could now be hit to pay for bad banking debts.

The NYT reported yesterday -

While depositors with less than 100,000 euros in their accounts will be untouched, people with more money will take losses in a first for euro zone bailouts. More broadly, this is the first time a euro zone country is planning to block depositors from taking their money out of financial institutions in large amounts and moving it elsewhere.

With capital controls now being implemented in Cyprus, depositors and investors throughout Europe are beginning to wonder if any bank is safe. Although Russian billionaire Alexander Lebedev seemed confident the controls wouldn’t work -

“It’s not worth talking about,” he said. “Cyprus was always a transit jurisdiction – money would pass through and then go to Lithuania, Latvia, Belize, Switzerland, everywhere. There are plenty of ways [to avoid capital controls], they can split accounts.”

The multimillionaire owner of the Evening Standard and Independent expressed doubts that capital controls to be imposed by the Cypriot government in order to stem a bank run would work. “Certain schemes can be put into place,” Lebedev said by telephone from Moscow. “This is how Cyprus was making money.”