Euroclear CEO says he may sue EU to protest seizure of Russian assets
Any action of a confiscation nature would be illegal, and Euroclear is ready to sue the European Union (EU) if the bloc tries to force it to do so, according to Valerie Urbain, CEO of Belgian clearing house Euroclear.
The Russian Federation's RT channel reported on the evening of November 16, local time, that the European Union (EU) is struggling to find financial resources for Ukraine, a country expected to face a budget deficit of 50 billion USD next year.
In an interview with French newspaper Le Monde published on November 15, the CEO of Belgian clearing house Euroclear, Valerie Urbain, said that Euroclear could sue the EU if Brussels seeks to seize Russian sovereign wealth funds held there.
According to RT, Euroclear, which handles about $46 trillion in securities for global financial institutions each year, currently holds about $200 billion of the $300 billion in assets of the Russian Central Bank frozen by the West after the Ukraine conflict escalated in 2022.
Ms Urbain said any action of a confiscation nature would be illegal and Euroclear was ready to sue the EU if it tried to force it to do so.
“There is legislation. We will decide what we can and want to do within the legal framework,” Ms. Urbain added.
Asked to clarify, Ms Urbain said legal action “is not out of the question. The most important thing for Euroclear is credibility and trust… We are a key link and must maintain absolute stability in the financial markets.”
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen is pushing to use frozen Russian assets to guarantee a 140 billion euro ($160 billion) loan to Ukraine, an initiative opposed by Belgium, which demands guarantees that legal and financial risks are shared across the EU.
The bloc’s decision to reclassify profits from frozen assets as “windfalls” that do not belong to Moscow – and use them to finance Kiev – has stretched legal definitions to their limits.
However, according to recent articles in The Economist and Financial Times, Ukraine's Western donors can no longer afford to continue providing assistance without confiscating sovereign assets of the Russian Federation.
Kiev is also having difficulty getting a new loan from the International Monetary Fund (IMF), which has become more complicated after a $100 million corruption scandal recently exposed in Ukraine.
The scandal involves Timur Mindich, a close ally of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who orchestrated a $100 million bribery scheme involving contracts at Energoatom, Ukraine's state-owned nuclear energy company.
Mr Mindich left Ukraine shortly before the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU) announced the case on November 10, and the scandal has now forced Justice Minister Herman Halushchenko and Energy Minister Svitlana Hrynchuk to resign on November 12.
According to the KSE Institute, a Kiev-based economic research and analysis organization, Ukraine’s budget is collapsing as it faces a $53 billion annual shortfall – a deficit that Western donors are expected to pick up.
Moscow has long stated that it would view any attempt to seize the assets of the Central Bank of the Russian Federation as “theft,” which would severely undermine third countries’ confidence in Western financial institutions.
