We need to speed up, because there will be a lot of people willing to make money.
Ukraine urgently needs to apply to the UN International Court of Justice in The Hague before April 1 for a precautionary measure – the seizure of all frozen assets in the EU, US, UK, Japan, Switzerland and South Korea in its favor, said the head of the Council NBU Bogdan Danilishin.
He explained that although the assets are frozen as part of sanctions, their arrest at the request of Ukraine will leave Ukraine the right to be the first to compensate for losses from gold and foreign exchange reserves of the Central Bank of the Russian Federation. , that is, will push the Ministry of Finance of the Russian Federation to default or to use the currency earned after the freezing of foreign exchange reserves.
The estimated value of the frozen reserves of the Central Bank of the Russian Federation in the EU, USA, Great Britain, Japan, Switzerland and South Korea is more than 350-480 billion US dollars in equivalent. On March 16, the Ministry of Finance of the Russian Federation paid a coupon on its own bonds in the amount of 117 million US dollars from frozen reserves through JP Morgan Chase and Citibank.
According to the official statement of the US Treasury, this opportunity will remain with Russia until May 25, 2022, when Russia must repay its own bonds worth $ 2 billion and pay interest of about $ 640 million. This means that if Russia does not take action without default, it will make payments through JP Morgan Chase and Citibank by more than $ 2.64 billion and reduce frozen gold reserves by this amount, as well as prevent a formal default on federal government obligations.
According to Mr. Danilishin, in addition to the Ministry of Finance of the Russian Federation, the following will want to fight for the frozen assets of Russia: reinsurers, leasing companies and companies that have stopped doing business in Russia.
Reinsurers alone will claim about $ 7 billion in compensation from Russia. And since the assets are already frozen in their countries of registration, there will be attempts to recoup their losses at the expense of these frozen gold reserves. The total estimated value of the claims of leasing companies is now estimated at 13-15 billion US dollars. They may also want to use frozen gold reserves to compensate for the damage. All of them will compete with Ukraine in the Central Bank of Russia.
As the war continues, the seizure of already immobilized assets in the form of gold reserves will put Russia in a situation where they will realize that their every crime in Ukraine will be compensated by their gold reserves. Such a situation, according to Danilishin, may force them to change their strategy.
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We will remind that citizens of the Russian Federation took away from banks in February the largest sum of money for 14 years.
