New opportunities arise to confiscate Russian assets.

A significant portion of the Russian assets that were stored in debt securities in the Belgian Euroclear depository, is now resting in accounts belonging to correspondent banks in cash after the securities were redeemed and now falls under many countries’ jurisdiction. Ukrainian lawyers believe this provides new opportunities for the confiscation of these assets.

“About 90% of Russian reserves are currently stored in cash in banks worldwide. Since these monetary assets are now under the jurisdiction of these countries, national governments can use existing legal norms to transfer these funds to an international trust fund for Ukraine,” these legal experts say.

According to their data, in 2022 there were approximately $235B in frozen funds in Europe and $34-61B outside of it, and now $165B is under the jurisdiction of Belgium, Switzerland, and France, and $105-126B is under the jurisdiction of the US, the UK, Canada, Japan, Singapore, and Australia. This represents approximately 40% of the total volume of frozen Russian reserves.