Euroclear’s income from Russian assets for 2023 amounted to €4.4 billion – Kommersant

At the end of 2023, the Euroclear group earned €4.4 billion in operating income from investing frozen Russian assets, it says report international depository. These assets account for 80% of the group’s interest income, totaling €5.5 billion for the year.

As the depositary notes, such interest income is determined by two factors: prevailing interest rates and the amount of cash balances that are invested by Euroclear. Taking into account Belgian corporate tax, these revenues will generate tax revenues of €1.085 billion in 2023.

Previously reported, that in 2022, interest income from investing Russian assets blocked in Euroclear at the end of 2022 amounted to €821 million. Thus, in 2023, the income received was 5.5 times more than in 2022. For 2022-2023, revenues exceeded €5.2 billion.

After the outbreak of hostilities in Ukraine, the G7 countries, the European Union and Australia froze almost $300 billion of Russian state assets. Most of them are located in the Euroclear depository. At the end of 2023, the EC presented a plan to use the windfall generated by freezing Russian assets and investing them. For now, it is proposed to accumulate extraordinary profits from the assets of the Bank of Russia in separate accounts in the depositories of the European Union, pending the EC’s proposal on further steps.

16 January Belgian Ministry of Finance reportedthat the European Union has begun work at a technical level to seize the frozen assets of the Bank of Russia. It is assumed that after taxes are written off from income from frozen funds, the money will be directed to help Ukraine.

Read more about how European countries plan to use income from frozen Russian funds in the Kommersant FM article. “The European Union is skimming profits from assets”.

Alexander Kislov