Ministry of Finance: there are no prerequisites for mass confiscation of Russian assets yet

The Ministry of Finance believes that there are no prerequisites yet that sanctions against Russia will follow a very harsh scenario and mass confiscation of its assets will begin. This was stated by the director of the Department for Control of External Restrictions of the Ministry of Finance, Dmitry Timofeev, at a conference organized by the Valdai Club.

“The volume of foreign assets in the Russian Federation is significant and large, comparable. Therefore, there is a chance, so to speak, that, firstly, the sanctions will not follow a very strict scenario, and the massive seizure of property will not happen,” leads his words TASS.

The official also added that Russia plays a big role in the global market, so the West will not be able to isolate its economy. “It’s one thing to declare, another thing to do. This is fraught with consequences for the global economy. There will be a lot of dissatisfied people,” Timofeev believes.

Earlier, Russian President Vladimir Putin at the plenary meeting of the EEF statedthat the withdrawal of Russian funds abroad crosses all boundaries. Presidential press secretary Dmitry Peskov called all cases of blocking or seizure of Russian property illegal.

On September 7, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced that assets confiscated from Russian businessmen would be used to support Ukrainian veterans. It was clarified that they were talking about about $5.4 million. On June 30, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz called the issue of confiscating Russian assets “terribly complicated.” As Bloomberg noted, the EU came to the conclusion that there are no legal grounds for the complete confiscation of frozen Russian assets.

After the start of the military operation in Ukraine, a number of Western countries froze the assets of companies and entrepreneurs from Russia. As the head of the EC Ursula von der Leyen stated in November 2022, the West blocked 300 billion euros of reserves of the Central Bank of the Russian Federation. Finance Minister Anton Siluanov reported in March 2022 that the Russian Federation had lost access to half of the gold and foreign exchange reserves of the Bank of Russia – about $300 billion.