Netherlands freezes 7 times less Russian money than expected

8 October 16:43

Dutch financial institutions have frozen significantly less Russian funds than previously thought. This is reported by the local edition of De Telegraaf, Komersant UkrainianKomersant Ukrainian reports.

According to the publication, earlier this year, the government informed the Dutch parliament that it was about 660 million euros of frozen Russian funds in the accounts of local banks. Now it turned out that this amount is less than one hundred million euros. This follows from the documents that Foreign Minister Kaspar Veldkamp sent to the parliament.

Thus, as of 1 July 2024, the “total amount of frozen private assets in the Netherlands” was only €97.2 million.

“This amount is significantly lower than the 660 million euros reported to parliament in January,”

– the documents say.

It turned out that more than half a billion of Russian assets were unblocked with the ministry’s permission. The 660 million euros mentioned relate to “virtually all assets” that have been “ever frozen” since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

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The funds were unblocked “through the granting of exemptions for outstanding payments and the distancing of authorised owners”, the document says.

The vast majority of this amount, €430 million, is attributable to two companies. For example, 230 million euros of a particular company no longer needed to be frozen because the company was “formally distanced” from its Russian owner through a special structure.

The fact that such a twist with Russian funds has only now come to light is due to the fact that since July this year, financial institutions have been subject to a new reporting obligation, which is part of the European package of sanctions against Russia. This “obligation” means that “financial institutions are not required to report the unblocking of assets, only their freezing, so the decrease in the amount was not previously obvious”.

In all cases, these are frozen assets of the Central Bank of Russia, for which the European Commission last month proposed to use “future emergency revenues” to protect Ukraine.

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Остафійчук Ярослав
Editor