Its got nothing to do with that. There are two reasons for this:
Newbies are also blocked from the shoutbox for 2 weeks too. This prevents members who have been banned simply making a new account on a proxy and spamming the forums and the admins mail. Trust me it happens way more often than you think.
It also encourages new members to post on the forums for help rather than clutter the shoutbox.
You can always argue "haha wont apply for me!" But we have a track record of it being frequent enough to have our reasons. I believe JC also disabled his pm's on this site since people ask for help instead of posting on the forums to "go direcrly to the developer". I currently keep my PM's open. If you want anything be sure to shoot me a PM.