Almost 30 billion euros – this is the value of the frozen assets in the Union of Russian and Belarusian oligarchs in the framework of the imposed sanctions. The European Commission has announced this.
“Simply imposing sanctions is not enough, they need to be implemented and enforced,” the Commission emphasizes, informing about the data received from almost half of the member states that have frozen the assets of the oligarchs. “These include helicopters, yachts, real estate and works of art,” said European Commission spokesman Christian Wiegand.
Nearly $200 billion in transactions blocked
In addition, Member States have blocked transactions by sanctioned oligarchs worth almost 196 billion euros. The Commission called on those countries that have not yet sent information about the frozen assets to Brussels.
A task force has been set up in Brussels to deal with the frozen assets and blocked bank accounts of Russian and Belarusian oligarchs. The European Union is cooperating on this issue with Ukraine and the United States.
Links between assets
One of the objectives of the working group set up by the European Commission to address the freezing of Russian and Belarusian assets is to investigate the link between assets owned by individuals under EU sanctions and criminal activity. In this context, the Task Force asked all Member States to provide information on assets frozen to date in their respective jurisdictions.
While the work continues and Member States collect and share information, more than half of the Member States have so far reported to the Commission on the measures taken to freeze assets. They reported €29.5bn in frozen assets, including assets such as yachts, helicopters, real estate and art worth almost €6.7bn. In addition, transactions worth about 196 billion euros were blocked.