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Russian assets worth 21.5 bln euros frozen in EU to date, says European Commissioner

According to him, the EU is also intensively working to find and block the funds of the Bank of Russia

BRUSSELS, February 17. /TASS/. The European Union has so far found and frozen the assets of Russian companies and individuals to the tune of 21.5 billion euros, Didier Reynders, European Commissioner for Justice, told a press conference in Brussels on Friday.

"For the moment, we have had an opportunity to freeze 21.5 bln euros of assets from oligarchs and entities on the sanctions list," Reynders said. He stressed that the EU continues to work on finding and freezing Russian resources and is looking for a legal formula to transfer these funds to Ukraine.

According to him, the EU is also intensively working to find and block the funds of the Bank of Russia.

Since the spring of 2022, the European Union has reported about the blocking of about 300 billion euros of assets of the Bank of Russia. However, as Bloomberg reported, Brussels does not actually know the location of 86% of all assets, which theoretically should be frozen. That is why the EU is now physically unable to confiscate and transfer this money to Ukraine.

According to the agency, the EU legal service prepared a document for the EU summit on February 9, in which it estimated the total amount of frozen Russian assets at $258 billion. It also specified that no more than $36.4 billion of this amount, about 14%, has been spotted at the moment.

In these conditions, the EU legal service also recommends working with the G7 and EU international partners to find the rest of the frozen Russian gold and foreign exchange reserves, if Brussels intends to invest these funds and use the interest to pay Ukraine. The EU legal service also admits that the viability of this plan will directly depend on how much of these funds will be found on the accounts of European commercial and central banks.

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