Europe could confiscate frozen Russian assets and transfer the money to a fund to help Ukraine, The Times reports.
Most of these funds, about 300 billion euros, are in Europe. About 190 million euros are stored in the Belgian clearing house Euroclear, and up to 20 billion euros in its French competitor Clearstream. This significantly exceeds the 70 billion euros of private assets belonging to about 2,000 Russian citizens that are frozen by the sanctions coalition.
In theory, each country that holds Russian assets could decide to confiscate them and transfer them to a fund for Ukraine. The funds could then be invested more aggressively to generate higher returns and support Kyiv.
It is worth noting that Belgium levies a 25% tax on the profits that Euroclear makes from Russian assets, including interest and dividends on shares, and the proceeds go to the main European fund for helping Ukraine. To date, three tranches of payments of approximately 1.5 billion euros each have been made.
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