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Bank of Russia doing its best to solve issue of blocked assets — regulator

Elvira Nabiullina also said that the Bank of Russia and the Finance Ministry are working on a mechanism for exchanging frozen assets with foreigners, but negotiations with foreign regulators and investors are not currently underway

MOSCOW, September 1. /TASS/. The Bank of Russia is doing its best to solve the issue of blocked assets abroad, head of the regulator Elvira Nabiullina said on Friday. She was speaking at the conference "10 years of the mega-regulator: yesterday, today, tomorrow."

"The blocking of foreign assets - we know how painful it is. Together with market participants we were proud that a mass investor had emerged, but in few years they faced the situation with blocked assets. We are doing our best to solve this problem, discussing various options. It is clear that it does not depend on us, but we understand how important the solution of this problem is for the development of the financial market," Nabiullina said.

Nabiullina also said that the Bank of Russia and the Finance Ministry are working on a mechanism for exchanging frozen assets with foreigners, but negotiations with foreign regulators and investors are not currently underway.

Earlier there were reports that investors holding frozen foreign securities may receive the right to sell them. A draft presidential decree prepared by the government together with the Bank of Russia provides for the possibility of acquiring blocked securities from Russian investors with money from "C" type accounts.

As Finance Minister Anton Siluanov said at a meeting of the Council for Strategic Development and National Projects, currently, more than 3.5 million Russian citizens have assets worth 1.5 trillion rubles ($15.5 bln) blocked. At the first stage, it is planned to unblock accounts to the tune of about 100 billion rubles ($1 bln) belonging to retail investors.