The EU still has not found all the assets of the Russian Federation that can be used for the benefit of Ukraine – mass media

The intentions of the European Commission to use the frozen assets of the Central Bank of Russia for the reconstruction of Ukraine faced legal obstacles, as well as the fact that not all member states were able to identify all these assets on their territory.

“European Truth” writes about this in the Die Welt publication.

According to the European Commission, about 300 billion euros of assets of the Russian central bank are located on the territory of the European Union, another 21 billion euros are believed to belong to Russian oligarchs.

According to Die Welt, the problem with finding the funds of the Central Bank of the Russian Federation is that it is difficult to track them abroad: they are stored in numerous accounts that cannot always be linked to a bank in Moscow.

“The treasure hunt of (Chairman of the Central Bank of the Russian Federation Elvira. – Ed.) Nabiullina in Europe seems to be more difficult than expected,” the newspaper writes. The proposal of the European Commission to impose fines for non-disclosure of assets of the Russian Federation by member states, as is known, was not supported.

The next problem is how to use the assets of the Central Bank of the Russian Federation for the benefit of Ukraine in a legal way. In a document prepared by the European Commission for the negotiations and obtained by Die Welt, it is stated that the assets will have to be returned to Russia at the end of the war.

The working option to which the executive body of the EU is inclined and which was known beforeinvolves investing the frozen reserves of the Central Bank of the Russian Federation in European government bonds and using the annual income from them – which will be at the level of 2.6%.

This “exceptional step” is likely to be legally possible, especially given Russia’s “gross violation” of international law, Die Welt quoted the European Commission document as saying. The risk of losing the invested funds there is assessed as very low, but theoretically the losses can amount to four billion euros.

“How to act in such a case remains to be determined,” concludes Die Welt.

Read also: Transfer dirty Russian money to Ukraine: how it is planned to be done in Europe.