Delfi: The EU cannot find the frozen €300 billion of the Russian Central Bank, which they want to give to Ukraine

The European Union still cannot find the blocked €300 billion of the Russian Central Bank, which was frozen at the beginning of the invasion of Ukraine. The EU wants to transfer this money to rebuild Ukraine.

Delfi writes about this with reference to its own sources.

On Tuesday, 45 members of the European Parliament sent a letter to the leaders of the EU with the demand to create a single register of the funds of the Central Bank of the Russian Federation and Russian oligarchs blocked in the European Union, indicating the amounts and location of these funds. They emphasized that such a register still does not exist, and demand that the European Commission encourage EU member states to share with it information about seized Russian money in order to "have a clear picture of the situation."

Sources of the publication say that the European financial authorities, despite its statement about blocking €300 billion belonging to the Central Bank of Russia, have still not been able to find these funds. The estimate of blocked assets was based only on the statements of Russia itself, so in reality they may be much lower.

The problems with finding these assets may be related to the structure of management of Russian foreign assets — perhaps it is much more complex than previously thought.

• After the start of the great war, the USA, the EU and the countries of the "Big Seven" announced the blocking of half of Russiaʼs gold and foreign exchange reserves, or almost $300 billion. Earlier, the European Commission proposed to transfer the assets to a fund where they could be managed for profit. Currently, EU member states have the legal authority to temporarily use the assets of the Russian Central Bank in the amount of at least €33.8 billion for the reconstruction of Ukraine.