The government and the Bank of Russia plan to unfreeze part of foreign assets in order to exchange them for Russian assets seized abroad. Finance Minister Anton Siluanov announced this at a meeting of the Council for Strategic Development, which was broadcast live on the Rossiya 24 channel.
“Today we have blocked the assets of more than 3.5 million Russian citizens in the amount of 1.5 trillion rubles. <…> We envisage the beginning of the exchange of the assets of our citizens for the assets of foreign investors, which today are accumulated on accounts of type «C»,» Kommersant quotes Siluanov.
At the first stage, according to the Minister of Finance, it is planned to unfreeze accounts for about 100 billion rubles.
The head of the Central Bank Elvira Nabiullina spoke about the possibility of exchanging frozen assets in June. According to official data as of November 2022, the amount of blocked Russian assets in European financial institutions amounted to 5.7 trillion rubles.
At the end of last year, Interfax, citing its sources, reported that the amount of funds in type C accounts belonging to citizens and companies from «unfriendly» countries approached 600 billion rubles.