Russia wants to exchange frozen assets with the West
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Russia offers Western countries to exchange the assets of their companies, which are currently blocked in the Russian Federation, for Russian assets frozen by Ukraine’s partner countries after a full-scale Russian invasion.
He writes about it Financial Times with reference to the Central Bank of the Russian Federation, the Minister of Finance of the Russian Federation Anton Siluanov and own sources in the governments of Western countries.
Moscow plans to give interested Western investors the opportunity to buy the assets of Russian companies that have been immobilized in Europe, using their own funds, which are kept in accounts in Russia, and which cannot be spent outside the country.
Russia believes the deal could potentially unlock 100 billion rubles ($1 billion), mostly owned by retail investors, out of a total of 1.5 trillion rubles of frozen Russian assets in the west.
Moscow’s offer would compensate retail investors for their investments in Western securities that have been frozen under Western sanctions and stuck in clearinghouses such as Belgium’s Euroclear, and would also allow some Western companies to repatriate stuck funds from Russia, a person familiar with the matter said.
Russia has not yet made public the details of the proposed exchange, which will be outlined in a presidential decree.
Western officials told the FT they had no knowledge of the proposal and that no talks were under way about a possible asset swap. But any potential deal will be complicated by legal and regulatory difficulties for Western investors when disposing of their assets in Russia, the agency’s interlocutors note.
Four top officials in the EU noted that negotiations between the EU and Russia on a possible exchange of financial assets are not underway. One of them added that they do not see detailed negotiations on such an agreement realistic in the near future.
Western governments are unlikely to agree to any deal that equates Russian assets frozen in response to Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine with Western assets stuck in Russia as a result of the latter’s illegal actions.
According to the Belgian government, almost 200 billion euros of Russian assets were frozen by sanctions at Euroclear, the world’s largest clearinghouse, 180 billion euros of which are reserves of the Russian central bank. Currently, Western officials are studying ways to legally withdraw profits from these assets and offer them as financial aid to Ukraine.
Read more: Frozen Russian assets can work for Ukraine already today. How to do it?
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