The Central Bank of Russia continues to work for the return of frozen Russian assets in euros and dollars. This was expressed in the speech of the head of the Central Bank of the Russian Federation, Elvira Nabiullina, to the State Duma.
He added that there is a “negotiating position” on this issue.
“We continue to work to return our reserves in euros and dollars. In particular, the presidential decree imposed restrictions on non-residents from withdrawing funds from hostile countries from Russia. This is a retaliatory measure and constitutes a negotiating position on this issue,” he said.
Nabiullina added that the Central Bank is currently creating reserves in connection with which assets cannot be used for sanctions pressure and how the situation in the markets has changed.
“We can now feel quite calm – our country has a cushion of safety in assets that are not subject to sanctions,” said the Governor of the Central Bank of Russia.
On April 14, Russian presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that Western countries’ actions to block Russian assets went beyond the norms of international law.
“It is now becoming obvious that these gangster acts of the collective West are blocking our assets (“bank funds”, tracing paper from French – approx. ed.) will not work in any way and will not work in any way with the legitimation of these steps. No matter how you look at it, all his actions still seem illegal.”
According to him, “The Kremlin will watch how the West acts further.” “We demand that all this be unblocked and we consider it illegal. We believe that any attempt to justify this is doomed to failure,” the Kremlin spokesperson summarized.
Earlier, the German newspaper Die Welt published an article in which it was stated that the frozen assets of the Central Bank of the Russian Federation “should not be touched because one day war broke out”, citing a confidential document from the European Commission. done, they must be extradited to Russia.”
At the same time, European Commission staff believe that frozen funds cannot be transferred directly, so they can at least be used to restore Ukrainian infrastructure. Among the options examined in Brussels is investing the assets of the Central Bank of the Russian Federation in European government bonds at an annual rate of 2.6%. This “emergency measure” is legally possible given Russia’s “grave violations” of international law.
Brussels believes that the risk of losing funds when investing is small, but they do not rule out such a scenario. Die Welt also says that in an extreme scenario and investment collapse, Russian assets could lose up to 4 billion euros in volume.
As before, all Russian assets of the Central Bank were located in Europe and not frozen. Their total number is estimated at 300 billion euros. At the same time, US and EU authorities were able to find and arrest only 80-100 billion dollars.
Die Welt writes that when it comes to the frozen private assets of Russian businessmen, European bureaucrats also have difficulties: to seize funds, it will be necessary to prove the guilt of an individual businessman and consider each case in court. Die Welt notes that recent examples show that businessmen in the Russian Federation successfully returned frozen assets.
In addition to the EU, Russian assets in the UK were frozen. London held about $20 billion. The Kingdom’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs also stated that confiscation of Russian assets is a legal precedent, adding that “we must make sure we comply with domestic and international law.”
On March 22, the World Bank estimated the cost of restoring Ukraine’s infrastructure to be $411 billion.
On July 22, 2022, the head of the Central Bank of the Russian Federation, Elvira Nabiullina, announced that Moscow is preparing a lawsuit in connection with the freezing of assets.