Brussels opens the way to use frozen assets to Moscow and Russian oligarchs for the benefit of Ukraine

The European Commission will approve today a double plan to make Russia pay for its "horrendous crimes", both from an economic and a justice point of view, its president, Ursula von der Leyen, announced this morning.

Thomas Osborne
Thomas Osborne
30 November 2022 Wednesday 01:30
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Brussels opens the way to use frozen assets to Moscow and Russian oligarchs for the benefit of Ukraine

The European Commission will approve today a double plan to make Russia pay for its "horrendous crimes", both from an economic and a justice point of view, its president, Ursula von der Leyen, announced this morning. "We have the means to do it," she says.

The 19,000 million euros in which the assets frozen to Russian oligarchs in community territory are valued through European sanctions, in addition to 300,000 million dollars in reserves of the Central Bank of Russia, can be used for Moscow to compensate Kyiv for the devastation caused, says the community executive, subjected to great pressure from the Baltic countries and some Nordic countries to find a legal path that allows progress in the confiscation of these assets.

Von der Leyen has not, however, used such a term. The European Commission's proposal currently consists of creating a legal structure together with other international partners to "manage these funds and invest them." "The benefits would be dedicated to Ukraine and, once the sanctions are lifted, these funds must be used so that Russia fully pays for the damage caused to Ukraine," explained the German policy in a video message in which it rises to 600,000 millions of euros the cost of the damage caused by the war. "We can look for legal ways to make it work, Russia's horrible war crimes cannot go unpunished," he said.

The figure of 19,000 million euros in assets frozen to Russian oligarchs is new. Since June, the European Commission had not updated the calculation of the financial impact of the sanctions approved by the Twenty-seven, which after a good start stalled as a result of the growing legal difficulties to determine the ownership of assets such as mansions or pleasure yachts. The latest data provided brings to 3,500 million euros the assets frozen by Belgium, 2,500 million by Luxembourg, 2,300 by Italy, 2,200 million in Germany, 1,800 million by Austria and Ireland, 1,300 million in the case of France and, finally, just over 1,000 million in Spain.

In parallel, Von der Leyen proposes to work with the international community to create a special court to judge Russia. "Although we continue to support the International Criminal Court, we propose to create a special forum backed by the United Nations to investigate and prosecute the crime of Russia's aggression against Ukraine," says the head of the community executive, thus assuming another of the countries' demands geographically closer to Russia, who demand a more forceful response to Moscow. The community executive will detail his plans at a press conference this afternoon in Brussels.