Brussels asks to classify the evasion of sanctions as a previous step to confiscate the assets of oligarchs as an EU crime

BRUSSELS, 25 May. (EUROPE PRESS) -

The European Commission has proposed this Wednesday that the violation of sanctions be recognized as a crime prosecuted throughout the European Union as a preliminary step to have a sufficient legal basis that allows it to legislate later on the confiscation of assets seized from the Russian oligarchs complicit in the invasion of Ukraine.

Currently, Community legislation already provides for confiscation in cases of serious crimes --such as terrorist acts, human trafficking or money laundering-- but it is not applied uniformly in the Member States, which complicates the confiscation of most of assets, as explained in a press conference by the Commissioner for the Interior, Ylva Johansson.

Brussels estimates that each year organized crime moves some 139,000 million euros in the common space, but barely 2% is frozen and only 1% is confiscated; and this despite the fact that there is a directive on recovery and confiscation that allows action in this regard.

For this reason, the community services ask to renew the rule so that the identification, location, freezing and confiscation of assets generated by criminal activities are harmonized and speeded up before the authors manage to divert these funds or hide their criminal origin.

With an eye on this review, the Community Executive also contemplates expanding the crimes covered by the rule to be able to apply it when criminals violate EU sanctions, but there will be no specific legislative proposal until the Twenty-seven and the European Parliament give the green light to the first stage of criminalizing this circumvention as a crime in the EU.

Since the beginning of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the Member States have reported the freezing of assets worth 9,890 million euros due to the five rounds of sanctions agreed upon by the Twenty-seven, including real estate, works of art or yachts. .

However, only in some of the Member States the legal framework would allow these properties to be confiscated if it is established that the owners have violated the sanctions, while in others, such as Spain, breaching the restrictive measures imposed by the EU is hardly an administrative fault.

In the proposals presented this Wednesday by the Community Executive, the destination of the confiscated material is not clarified, although the Justice Commissioner, Didier Reynders, has advocated creating a "common fund" to which the Member States would be asked to dump the amounts confiscated with the aim of "repairing the victims".

Some Member States and even the High Representative for Foreign Policy of the EU, Josep Borrell, have recently pointed out the opportunity to use the frozen funds to the accomplices of the Vladimir Putin regime to pay for the reconstruction of Ukraine, even with the blocked reserves of the Bank Russian Central, but this possibility is not included in the texts presented at the moment by Brussels.