Depository Euroclear plans to seize and redistribute around €3 billion of Russian funds frozen in the company.
The relevant documents were obtained by Reuters.
The money will be used to compensate Western investors for assets that Moscow itself confiscated from them in Russia, the agencyʼs sources say. According to them, Euroclear will transfer €3 billion of the total €10 billion in cash. It belongs to Russian companies and individuals who were hit by EU sanctions after the full-scale invasion.
Brussels allowed payments to Western investors under such circumstances by changing sanctions legislation at the end of 2024. Previously, allies provided Ukraine with loans and payments from interest accrued on frozen Russian assets — actions Putin called “theft”.
Euroclear received permission for the seizure from Belgian authorities, its main regulator, in March of this year. Clients were notified of the upcoming payments on April 1. According to two of the people, the payments to Western investors will not affect the more than €200 billion in Russian Central Bank reserves frozen in the EU.
But it will reduce the volume of Russian assets — cash, stocks and bonds — held mostly in Euroclear and used as leverage by the EU to pressure Moscow. Some had hoped that the frozen Russian assets would be used to rebuild Ukraine. So the new move is already being criticized.
“Confiscating Russian assets and handing them over to Western investors is morally unacceptable. It would be a political decision in favour of Western business, not taxpayers. All frozen assets that do not go to rebuilding Ukraine will ultimately have to be covered from the state budget,” says a sanctions expert at the Peterson Institute for International Economics in the United States Jacob Kirkegaard.
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