The Belgian infrastructure group of Euroclear financial markets plans to confiscate and redistribute around three billion euros in Russian funds to Western investors after seizure in recent months by Moscow of liquidity maintained in Russia, according to documents consulted and three sources close to the archive. The European Union (EU) has frozen hundreds of billions of Russian assets, including the reserves of the Central Bank, after the invasion of Ukraine by Russia in February 2022, its most severe sanction against Moscow to date.
With 180 billion euros, Euroclear has most of these frozen Russian assets. The company, based in Brussels, manages international fund deposits and guarantees the operation without problems of the transactions of financial institutions. The western ones have already resorted from frozen Russian assets to finance loans and donations to Ukraine, to the disgust of Vladimir Putin, who denounces a flight.
Western investors represent dozens of billions of euros blocked in Russia, either in the form of factories or liquidity. In recent months, the Russian government has seized three billion euros in liquidity in the hands of Euroclear of a depositary in Russia to compensate for Russian investors attacked by Western sanctions, two of the sources said.
Without resorting to 200 billion euros in reservations of the Russian Central Bank
For its part, the EU modified its sanctions regime at the end of 2024 to authorize the payment of funds to Western investors in compensation for the confiscation of its assets by Moscow. According to two sources, Euroclear will redistribute three billion euros with a set of liquidity for a total of 10 billion and belonging to Russian entities and individuals attacked by EU sanctions. The company obtained in March Belgium’s authorization to proceed with payment, the sources said.
Reuters could not establish the identity of the investors that will be reimbursed or that of the Russian owners whose assets will be seized. The Belgian government has refused to comment and Russia’s Ministry of Finance did not respond to applications. Western investors payments will not be based on the more than 200 billion euros in reserves of the Russian Central Bank that froze in the European Union, the two sources said, but in reality they will reduce Russian assets: liquidity, shares and obligations) in almost all of Euroclear.
Clearstream, a German scholarship branch that, such as Euroclear, stores values, such as shares and bonds for stock market operators, will also make payments similar to Western investors of Russian money frozen on a smaller scale, said a source of the archive, around several hundred millions of euros.
Source: BFM TV
