Robles: How much influence do you think the US has on the European Parliament?

Hrafnsson: Well, it is obviously, in my mind, there has been a tremendous pressure on behalf of these American corporations. And as we have seen, happening in Russia for example, the American State Department is acting very often on behalf of these American financial powers. That happened when the Duma was contemplating establishing the Russian payment system and forcing Visa and MasterCard to use a Russian local system. Basically, it was argued that this was a matter of national security.