Russian elite withdraws $50 billion from Europe
Russian billionaires have withdrawn $50 billion worth of assets from so-called "unfriendly" European countries since the start of the full-scale war, due to increasingly severe sanctions and pressure from the Kremlin, Bloomberg reported on September 14.
The publication reported that Russia's wealthy are transferring their funds from locations such as Cyprus, Switzerland, or the Isle of Jersey in the UK back to Russia or to places that Moscow considers friendly, such as Kazakhstan or the United Arab Emirates.
As Bloomberg pointed out, the first to take this step were fertiliser billionaire Andrei Guriev and steel magnate Victor Rashnikov, followed by Igor Altushkin, Igor Shilov, Mark Kurtser, and others.
While the Russian elite has traditionally preferred to store assets in Europe, their options are becoming increasingly limited as many of them are on Western sanctions lists.
Russian companies are also transferring their assets to domestic "offshore" zones, Bloomberg reported, citing Ilya Torosov, the Russian deputy minister of economy.
The United States, the United Kingdom, the European Union, and other Western governments have imposed a series of sanctions against high-profile Russian individuals linked to the Kremlin or involved in Russia's aggression against Ukraine.
Members of the Russian elite have had their offshore assets frozen or have been banned from entering Western countries. In the meantime, Kyiv wants to create mechanisms for frozen assets to be used in the reconstruction and recovery of Ukraine.
On September 6, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said that for the first time, Washington will finance support for Ukrainian military veterans using "assets confiscated from sanctioned Russian oligarchs."
Translation by Iurie Tataru
