Russian FM urges judicial permission for foreign assets seizure
Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov says Moscow expects judicial permission to seize foreign state property in response to a recent move by some European countries to freeze the assets of Russian diplomatic missions and other organizations in an apparent legal row.
“I hope that our courts will announce decisions that will allow the Russian state to arrest foreign property on our territory and namely those states that act like this with us,” Lavrov said on Friday,
On Thursday, France and Belgium seized Russian assets in the wake of Moscow’s refusal to conform to a multibillion-dollar court settlement compensating shareholders in a case involving now defunct Yukos oil company.
Lavrov said in his Friday remarks that the case concerns “property with state participation.”
Russian economic operators are preparing lawsuits to freeze European properties with public ownership “in response to illegal actions against them,” he added.
The top Russian diplomat also described Russia’s possible actions as “reciprocal” and “inevitable… on the international scene.”
Earlier, Belgian authorities froze the accounts of several Russian companies as well as its embassy and missions to the European Union (EU) and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).
In a similar move, French authorities also froze the accounts of Russian firms, including those in the French subsidiary of Russia’s second largest bank VTB.
Russian Economic Development Minister Alexei Ulyukayev denounced as illegal the asset seizures by Paris and Brussels, warning that Moscow would challenge the move.
Yukos was once Russia’s biggest oil producer run by Mikhail Khodorkovsky, who was arrested in 2003 and spent ten years in prison on charges of embezzlement and tax evasion. He was granted residency in Switzerland after being released in 2013.
In July last year, the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague, the Netherlands, ordered Russia to pay approximately USD 50 billion to Yukos’ former shareholders. The court ruled that Russia violated the 1991 International Energy Charter when it dismantled the oil firm and auctioned off its main assets in 2004.
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