Exchange frozen assets with the West: will Russia succeed?
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In Europe, the possibility is still denied
The idea of a possible exchange of blocked financial assets between the EU and Russia, actively discussed in Moscow, ran into a refutation from official Brussels. No talks are underway, four senior European officials told the Financial Times. According to the interlocutors of the British edition, they “know nothing about this proposal.”
Meanwhile, on August 22, the head of the RF Ministry of Finance, Anton Siluanov, announced the developed mechanism, which, with a high degree of probability, will make it possible to unfreeze the assets of Russian private investors abroad. In accordance with the government decree, at the first stage the amount will be about 100 billion rubles. The total amount of funds to which there is no access, the minister estimated at 1.5 trillion rubles, they belong to 3.5 million investors. In turn, the Central Bank clarified: these assets will be offered to be bought out by foreign investors, whose funds (in the amount of about 0.6 trillion rubles) are now blocked in the Russian Federation in special ruble accounts of type “C”.
What are C accounts? They appeared in accordance with Decree of the President of the Russian Federation No. 95 dated May 1, 2022, as if in the wake of Western sanctions that led to the freezing of Russian assets abroad, explains financial analyst Mikhail Belyaev, Candidate of Economic Sciences. – Accounts “C” received funds from those foreign owners who stopped doing business in Russia by selling a package of their securities (part of the share capital). The proceeds from the sale were not allowed to be exported to foreigners, having been blocked on C-type accounts. However, from these accounts they were allowed to invest in Russian government bonds, buy blocks of shares in Russian enterprises, pay taxes (if they still have production facilities in the Russian Federation).
After almost a year and a half of headbutting with the West over the accounts frozen by both sides, the Ministry of Finance and the Central Bank of the Russian Federation seem to have found a way out of the impasse by putting forward the idea of mutual unblocking. Moreover, it was decided to start with a relatively small amount of 100 billion rubles. The situation with individuals is relatively simple, unlike the story with gold and foreign exchange reserves: the legal mechanism is clear, the amounts are clear, the ownership of the funds is clear. There is an important legal point here, Belyaev notes: individuals do not fall under the motives for which the West decided to block financial resources, namely: because of the decision of the Russian state to launch a special military operation. Why are they here?
In the opinion of the interlocutor of MK, if the project is implemented, then in theory it can come to a partial unlocking of the state gold and foreign exchange reserves of our country in the amount of $ 300 billion. In practice, this will be much more difficult to achieve due to a number of circumstances, both technical and political properties.
Meanwhile, according to Financial Times sources in Brussels, they do not know anything about the initiative of the Russian monetary authorities. According to one of the interlocutors of the publication, he does not see the possibility of holding detailed negotiations on this issue in the foreseeable future in connection with international sanctions against the Russian Federation. “Western governments are unlikely to agree to any deal that equates Russian frozen assets with Western ones blocked in Russia,” the FT notes.
The authors of the article also recall that Moscow’s proposal was made against the backdrop of disputes in the EU about whether Russian assets frozen by the clearing company Euroclear for €196.6 billion should be used to help Ukraine by transferring profits from their investment. Such measures could lead Russia to take control of even more Western assets in the country, as happened with Uniper, Fortum, Danone and Carlsberg.
Newspaper headline:
One way exchange
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