Euroclear began to unfreeze the assets of Russian investors without a US license

The Belgian depository Euroclear has started unblocking the assets of Russian owners without an American OFAC license.

This information is published by RBC Investments, with reference to a representative of a large broker who is engaged in unfreezing investors' assets from Russia.

Gleb Boyko, a lawyer at the NSP law office, told the publication that he was already aware of three successful cases of such unblocking from different brokers.

It follows from the lawyer's explanations that the defrosting mechanism was agreed with Euroclear 1.5 months ago. According to the new scheme, it is enough to obtain only a Belgian license for the process.

While until recently, Russians needed to obtain two licenses to unlock assets — from regulators EU and USA.

According to the agency, the new practice was introduced in Euroclear about a month and a half ago. Back in the summer, the European depository did not use this mechanism.

"In the absence of involvement in the transaction to unlock a US person (American persons or financial institutions), Euroclear will not require an OFAC license even to unlock assets from US nexus (securities related to the United States)," the lawyer stated.

Thus, Euroclear has fixed a new procedure for unlocking. Now this process is possible without the participation of the American regulator, if:

• there are no American persons or financial institutions involved in the transaction;
• rearrangement of assets is carried out only within Euroclear;
• the investor has a license from the Belgian Treasury.

Recall that the assets of Russian investors were blocked in the European depositories Euroclear and Clearstream in 2022, after The EU has imposed sanctions against the Russian National Settlement Depository (NSD).

The amount of frozen funds was estimated at 6 trillion rubles. Since then, several operations have been carried out to unfreeze assets. But in 2024, the process became more complicated due to the fact that the United States imposed blocking sanctions against the Moscow Stock Exchange.

As a result, in addition to the license of the local regulator, permission from the American OFAC was also required.

As reported by EADaily, earlier the chairman of the State Duma Vyacheslav Volodin warned that if the European Union steals Russian assets, they will have to be returned with interest.