(RPT Title)
BRUSSELS (Reuters) – The Belgian infrastructure group for the Euroclear financial markets plans to seize and redistribute around three billion euros of frozen Russian funds to Western investors after the seizure in recent months by Moscow of liquidity held in Russia, according to documents consulted by Reuters and three sources close to the file.
The European Union (EU) has frozen hundreds of billions of Russian assets, including the reserves of the Central Bank, following the invasion of Ukraine by Russia in February 2022 – its most severe sanction against Moscow to date.
With 180 billion euros, Euroclear holds the majority of these frozen Russian assets.
The company, based in Brussels, manages international fund deposits and ensures the smooth running of the transactions of financial institutions.
Westerners have already drew from frozen Russian assets to finance loans and donations to Ukraine, to the chagrin of Vladimir Putin who denounces a flight. Western investors account for dozens of billions of euros in blocked in Russia, whether in the form of factories or liquidity.
In recent months, the Russian government has seized three billion euros in liquidity held by Euroclear from a depositary in Russia in order to compensate Russian investors struck by Western sanctions, two of the sources said.
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 their assets by Moscow.
-According to two sources, Euroclear will redistribute three billion euros with a set of liquidity totaling 10 billion and belonging to Russian entities and individuals struck by EU sanctions.
The company obtained in March the authorization of Belgium to proceed to the payment, the sources told Reuters.
“We have received the authorization of our competent authority to unlock the compensation amounts and make them available to our participants,” it is indicated in an information document dated April 1 consulted by Reuters.
Reuters could not establish the identity of investors who will be reimbursed or that of Russian owners whose assets will be seized. The Belgian government has refused to comment and the Russian Ministry of Finance did not respond to the requests.
Payments to Western investors will not draw from the more than 200 billion euros in reserves from the Russian central bank which were frozen in the European Union, said the two sources, but will actually reduce Russian assets – liquidity, stocks and obligations – held in almost all by Euroclear.
Clearstream, a branch of the German scholarship which, like Euroclear, stores securities such as shares and bonds for stock market operators, will also make payments similar to Western investors from Russian money frozen on a smaller scale, said a source to the file, around several hundred million euros.
Clearstream did not wish to make any comments.
(Report by John O’Donnell, with Alex Marrow in London and Julia Payne in Brussels; French version Bertrand de Meyer and Blandine Hénault, edited by Sophie Louet)
