Since last summer, 905 assets directly or indirectly owned by Russian state institutions have been identified in Ukraine. They are very diverse – both companies and capital shares, as well as, for example, simple railway wagons, which occupy half of this list.
Confiscation takes place through court
Although a list of assets owned directly or indirectly by the Russian state has been created, the legal process for the nationalization of these assets has not yet been initiated. The possible legal consequences of these decisions are currently being evaluated very carefully.
Meanwhile, confiscation of the assets of the sanctioned persons through the court has started in Ukraine. The Supreme Anti-Corruption Court is looking into issues of confiscation of the assets of sanctioned persons, and currently, approximately 200 large companies related to Russian citizens, including energy supply companies, companies related to the extraction of various minerals, have been identified in Ukraine.
“Currently, all this business has mostly been arrested, but it has not yet been confiscated, because in fact we have almost a dozen court decisions on confiscation,” says Hlibs Kanijevskis, head of the analytical center “StateWatch”, which monitors the process.
“For example, we have confiscated such large assets as the shopping center “Ocean Plaza”, which is related to the Rotenberg family. We have confiscated all Oleg Deripaska’s combines in Ukraine – quarries and Mykolaiv aluminum factory.
We have seized the assets belonging to Mykhailo Shelkov, he was one of the largest producers of titanium raw material in Ukraine, now we have finally returned it to the state.”
Huge damage has been done to Ukraine
These properties are confiscated by court decisions to sanctioned persons. There are about 4,000 of them in the Ukrainian list, and this list includes not only those close to the Russian government, but also Ukrainian residents who supported the Russian invasion or cooperated with the representatives of the aggressor state.
The funds obtained as a result of the confiscation are proposed to be used to compensate for the losses caused by Russian aggression, which are much larger.
The General Prosecutor’s Office of Ukraine has now realized that since the beginning of Russia’s general invasion, more than 74,000 residential houses, 500 hospitals, around 400 cultural institutions and many smaller objects have been destroyed in Ukraine, not to mention the energy infrastructure of Ukraine, which Russia has purposefully tried to destroy.
The total damage caused is currently estimated at 700 to 800 billion dollars.
The compensation recovery process will be long
“Current estimates are that we have assessed the damage caused by Russia at 700 to 800 billion dollars, this is a huge amount,” says Oleh Havrysh, a representative of the Ukrainian president’s office.
“The damage caused could be compensated with the Russian money that is currently seized all over the world. It is more than 100 billion dollars.
The process is underway, there is a UN resolution, a number of countries have made their decisions, and we hope to recover these funds within five to seven years, in the worst case – up to 10 years.”
As the representative of the office of the President of Ukraine admitted, this process, in which Ukraine could get the money confiscated by the Russian state or oligarchs in the West, could be very long.
However, even if it were possible to confiscate all the assets belonging to the Russian state and its oligarchs, Ukraine will still not have enough money to compensate for all the damage caused. That is why Ukraine is going to go to court against Russia and in this way recover the damages.
Highlight the text and press Ctrl+Enterto send the text fragment to be corrected to the editor!
Highlight the text and press on Report a bug buttons to send the text fragment to be corrected to the editor!
