Friday, March 29

Brussels wants to use Russian goods to rebuild Ukraine


The European Commission has proposed this Wednesday that the violation of sanctions is recognized as a crime prosecuted throughout the European Union as a preliminary step to have a sufficient legal base that allows to legislate later on the confiscation of property seized from Russian oligarchs complicit in the invasion of Ukraine.

Currently, Community legislation already provides for confiscation in cases of serious crimes – such as terrorist acts, human trafficking or money laundering – but is not applied uniformly in the Member Stateswhich complicates the confiscation of most assets, as explained at a press conference by the Commissioner for the Interior, Ylva Johansson.

Brussels estimates that each year organized crime moves about 139,000 million euros in the common space but barely 2% is frozen and only 1% is confiscated; and this despite the fact that there is a directive on recovery and confiscation that allows action in this regard.

Therefore, community services ask renew the rule so that the identification, location, freezing and confiscation of assets is harmonized and streamlined generated by criminal activities before the perpetrators manage to divert these funds or hide their criminal origin.

With an eye on this review, the Community Executive also contemplates expand the offenses covered by the rule to be able to apply it when criminals violate EU sanctionsbut there will be no concrete legislative proposal until the Twenty-seven and the European Parliament give the green light to the first stage of classifying this circumvention as a crime in the EU.

Since the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Member States have reported the freezing of assets worth 9,890 million euros for the five rounds of sanctions agreed at the moment by the Twenty-seven, including real estate, works of art or yachts.

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However, only in some of the member states would the legal framework allow these properties to be confiscated if it is established that the owners have violated the sanctions, while in others, such as Spain, breaching the restrictive measures imposed by the EU is hardly an administrative fault.

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In the proposals presented this Wednesday by the Community Executive, the fate of what was seized is not clarified, although the Justice Commissioner, Didier Reynders, has advocated creating a “common fund” to which the Member States would be asked to allocate the confiscated amounts with the aim of “compensating the victims”.

Some Member States and even the High Representative for Foreign Policy of the EU, Josep Borrell, have recently pointed out the opportunity to use the frozen funds to the accomplices of the Vladimir Putin regime to pay for the reconstruction of Ukraine, even with the blocked reserves of the Bank Russian Central, but this possibility is not included in the texts presented at the moment by Brussels.


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