European Union freezes $68 billion worth of Russian assets

This was reported by Politico, citing an internal European Commission document.

Belgium accounted for most of the funds, with €50bn blocked there, followed by Luxembourg with €5.5bn. These two countries, as well as Italy, Germany, Ireland, Austria and France, account for more than 90% of the total blocked assets.

The European Commission is now waiting for the European Council to approve a decision to make sanctions evasion a crime in the EU, which would make it easier to confiscate assets by court order. A European official says that if the frozen assets of sub-sanctioned individuals are recognised as criminally obtained and confiscated by the EU, they could be transferred to a compensation fund for Ukraine.

As of late October, the assets of sanctioned individuals and entities totalling 17bn euros had been frozen in the EU.