Germany to seize over 720 million euros from Russian financial institution amid EU sanctions
Germany's Federal Prosecutor, Peter Frank, is planning to seize more than 720 million euros owned by a Russian financial institution and transfer them to the state treasury, reports Spiegel. Germany's Federal Prosecutor's Office confirmed that the Higher Regional Court in Frankfurt was requested to confiscate over 720 million euros that are held in accounts of the Russian National Settlement Depository (NSD), a division of the Moscow Stock Exchange.
The Russian National Settlement Depository was subjected to EU sanctions in June 2022, resulting in the freezing of these assets. According to Spiegel Online, when the sanctions were announced, the management of the NSD branch made an attempt to prevent the assets from being blocked. They instructed a subsidiary of J.P. Morgan Bank to transfer over 720 million euros to an account at Commerzbank's National Clearing Corporation (NCC), another subsidiary of the Moscow Exchange. However, the transfer was stopped due to the sanctions. The German Federal Prosecutor's Office views this effort to move the funds as an act of circumventing the sanctions, which provides a formal reason to seize the assets.
Up until now, Germany has only frozen the assets of Russian companies listed on the EU sanctions list, amounting to just under 5 billion euros. The actual confiscation of funds from these assets based on the sanctions has not taken place yet. Across the European Union countries, there are approximately 210 billion euros worth of Russian assets that have been frozen.