The figure is astronomical. There are tens of billions of euros and more are accumulated every day. The European Union has frozen over 17,000 million euros (a similar figure in dollars) in assets of Russian oligarchs and entities under the sanctions imposed on Russia for the war in Ukrainethe European Commissioner for Justice said this Saturday.
“So far the assets of 90 people have been frozen. That is, over € 17 billion in seven Member Statesof which 2,200 million in Germany “, said the commissioner, Didier Reynders, in an interview with the media of the German group Funke.
“If it is criminal money confiscated by the EU, it can be transferred to a compensation fund for UkraineReynders stressed during the interview, who in July had valued the frozen assets of oligarchs or members of the Russian elite at around 13.8 billion euros.
The EU has so far adopted eight sanctions packages against Russia since the February 24 invasion. Ukrainian politicians insist that this “frozen” money be used for the reconstruction of Ukraine.
In this regard, Reynders believed that this possibility is possible as long as it is proven that the money comes from criminal activities. Even if she pointed it out “this sum is far from being sufficient to finance the reconstruction”.
They also meant Western sanctions “the freezing of 300,000 million euros” of foreign exchange reserves of the Central Bank of Russia in the world, an amount that could be used as a “guarantee”, considering the commissioner.
The issue of Russian funds abroad has become a preponderant issue in the context of the war in Ukraine, and for one of President Vladimir Putin’s main critics it is the key flank to attack so that Russia loses the war.
“Putin’s biggest weakness is his money. It’s that he stole all this money, he killed all these people to steal the money and he has all this money in the West, and that’s his huge Achilles heel, “British-American investor Bill Browder said, for years. considered the “number one enemy” of the Russian president.
“He and all the people around him have their money in the West and we have to keep stepping on that Achilles heel for as long as possible,” he added.
Founder and executive director of Hermitage Capital Management, Browder recommended in an interview with the EFE agency to confiscate the 350,000 million dollars of the Russian central bank that had been frozen at the beginning of the war and to allocate it to the defense and reconstruction of Ukraine. .
The financier argues that the way to defeat Putin is to locate, freeze and confiscate the money that the Russian president and oligarchs “stole”which according to his calculations exceeds one billion dollars.
“I’m a financial warfare specialist, because I’ve managed one for the past 13 years and, as a financial warrior, I think we’re still doing insufficient work. There are other ways we can continue to cause you financial pain,” he said.
And in this sense he asked to increase the number of sanctioned oligarchs, about 40, and said they could sanction 118 others, but which Turkey and Saudi Arabia are “protecting” to many of them.
Since the Russian invasion of Crimea in southern Ukraine in 2014, the assets of 1,236 people and 115 entities have been frozen. Among the sanctioned personalities are Putin, and his foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov; members of the Duma (Russian parliament) and oligarchs such as Roman Abramovich, Mijaíl Fridman or Petr Aven.
Source: Clarin
