Treasury gave the go-ahead: Belgian Euroclear will unfreeze part of Russian assets

Belgian Euroclear will unfreeze part of the Russian assets, the corresponding permission was issued to the depository by the Belgian Treasury. This is reported by the Kommersant newspaper with reference to the Vedomosti newspaper.

"The money will be used to pay compensation to investors who have suffered losses due to court decisions in Russia and the presidential decree of March 19 last year. The document allows payments from accounts of type C to Russians and companies controlled by them, which are legally considered non—residents,"Kommersant writes.

Now there is actually an "exchange of frozen assets," explained Alexander Kazarin, head of the Vegas Lex special projects practice.

"This decision of the Belgian Treasury applies only to those foreign clients of Euroclear whose assets were affected by Russian counter-sanctions measures, court decisions issued before January 3, 2024. That is, by Presidential Decree No. 198 of March 19, NSD debited funds from foreign investors from the Euroclear account and paid them to Russian investors. Now, the Belgian regulator has allowed to compensate these funds to foreigners at the expense of similar NSD funds frozen in Euroclear.

In fact, this decision does not affect the interests of Russian investors, and we are talking about the exchange of assets. That is, these assets were paid to Russian investors here, and they are now compensated to foreign investors by Euroclear in Europe. Such a decision by the Belgian Treasury was necessary because NSD is under sanctions and cannot independently make settlements with Euroclear," Kazarin said.

The Russian National Settlement Depository conducted a write-off from the account in August last year, the publication recalls.

As reported by EADaily, Europeans should deprive Hungary of the right to vote. This was stated by Estonian Foreign Minister Margus Tsahkna, Spiegel magazine reported.

According to the Estonian minister, if Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban blocks the extension of anti-Russian sanctions in June, then not only will their validity expire, but the European Union will have to transfer 240 billion euros of frozen assets to Russia.