BRUSSELS (Reuters) – The European Commission on Wednesday said proposed a plan to confiscate Russian assets that have been frozen to punish Moscow for the invasion of Ukraine.
“We have blocked 300 billion euros of the Russian Central Bank reserves and we have frozen 19 billion euros of Russian oligarchs’ money,” Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Union’s executive said in a statement.
She said that in the short term the EU and its partners could manage the funds and invest them. The proceeds would go to Ukraine so that ultimately would compensate for damages caused to the country.
“We will work on an international agreement with our partners to make this possible. And together, we can find legal ways to get to it,” she said.
She also said that the EU was proposing the establishment of a specialised court, backed by the United Nations, “to investigate and prosecute Russia’s crime of aggression”.
(Reporting by Charlotte Van Campenhout; Editing by John Chalmers)
