CNN: US announces transfer of confiscated assets of Malofeev to Ukraine

US Attorney General Merrick Garland said that the assets confiscated from Russian businessman Konstantin Malofeev will be used to support Ukraine, writes CNN. Earlier, the Russian, as noted, was charged with evading sanctions.

This will be the first case of the transfer of confiscated assets to Kyiv, writes CNN. Garland made his announcement Friday during a meeting with Ukrainian Prosecutor General Andriy Kostin at the Justice Department.

“Today I announce that I have authorized the first ever transfer of confiscated Russian assets for use in Ukraine. These confiscated assets follow an announcement I made last April charging Russian oligarch Konstantin Malofeev with sanctions evasion,” the U.S. Attorney General said.

Malofeev’s funds were withdrawn from his bank account last June for “acting or intending to act on behalf of the Russian government,” CNN said. After the confiscation, the assets will be transferred to the State Department “to support the people of Ukraine,” the Prosecutor General added. According to Kostin, we are talking about $ 5.4 million, they will be directed to the restoration of the country.

Since July 2014, the founder of Tsargrad, Konstantin Malofeev, has been under EU sanctions. After the start of a special military operation in Ukraine, the US Treasury Department in April introduced sanctions against Russian companies and individuals, including the Tsargrad media group and Malofeev and his family.

The account of Tsargrad, which positions itself as “the first Russian conservative information and analytical TV channel,” was blocked in July 2020. In March 2022, bailiffs seized Google accounts to enforce court decisions in a dispute with Tsargrad, which previously demanded to restore his account and reimburse the lost funds due to his removal from content monetization.

After the start of the NWO, Western countries blocked 300 billion euros of reserves of the Central Bank of the Russian Federation and 19 billion euros of private funds of Russian businessmen, the head of the EC, Ursula von der Leyen, said in November 2022. At the same time, she proposed creating a structure for managing Russian assets. According to her, the blocked funds of the Russian Central Bank and the assets of Russian oligarchs confiscated due to sanctions should be combined into a fund, the funds of which should be invested, and the profit from these investments should be used for compensation payments to Ukraine.

The Kremlin called the freezing of Russian assets theft. At the end of October last year, the press secretary of the President of the Russian Federation Dmitry Peskov said that the blocking of assets abroad is contrary to international law. He noted that Russia is limited in its actions to combat such a decision, but the Russian authorities will not “sit idly by.” At the end of January, the Ministry of Finance of the Russian Federation named three options for the decisions of the West on frozen assets.