About 200 million euros in revenue from frozen Russian assets will be sent by Belgium to help Ukraine. This was expressed by Belgian Prime Minister Alexander de Croo, as reported by the Dutch Broadcasting Corporation (NOS).
“Last March, Belgium confiscated approximately €200 million of revenue from Russian assets frozen in Belgium. “We are using these funds to support Ukraine’s military efforts and to assist Ukrainian refugees in Belgium.”
He spoke at a joint press conference in The Hague with Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
De Croo said the use of Russian money “makes sense both economically and morally”.
“We must use Russian money to rebuild the Ukraine they destroyed,” said the head of the Belgian government.
He also noted that since the outbreak of hostilities in Ukraine, Belgian financial services have frozen more than 180 billion euros of the Russian Central Bank’s assets.
“We are now exploring how we can use these funds to support Ukraine, its military efforts and the rebuilding of the country,” De Croo said.
On 3 May, Rolandas Kishkis, Director of the Lithuanian Financial Crimes Investigation Service, said that the amount of funds belonging to legal entities and individuals from the Russian Federation frozen by the Lithuanian authorities is more than 80 million Euros.
According to the official, the amount of capital and property frozen in 2023 has doubled. In addition, information about suspicious transactions began to come in twice as often. He stressed that all the restrictive measures implemented by the special service are now challenged in the courts.
On April 28, international custodian Euroclear announced that it was able to generate interest income of 734 million Euros from Russian assets frozen in the first quarter of 2023.
In the first half of 2022, this figure was € 110 million. Euroclear expects further growth in interest income as blocked fund accumulation continues.
At the same time, the custodian will not distribute profits from frozen Russian assets until the situation with them finally improves.
On April 18, the head of the Central Bank of Russia, Elvira Nabiullina, said that the Central Bank of the Russian Federation is trying to return Russian foreign currency reserves frozen in the West.
“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 the negotiating position on this issue,” he said.
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 now turns out that it is impossible to block these rogue acts of the collective West in any way into our assets, and it is impossible to justify 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.