These are cash and stocks located in Belgium owned by 1,229 people and 110 entities subject to sanctions against Russia—Russian politicians, oligarchs, banks, and corporations, De Morgen writes.
This is a surprisingly high amount: three weeks ago, 13.8 billion euros in assets had been frozen across the EU. Now the amount frozen by Belgium alone is considerably higher.
The latest sanction packages have added several banks to the list, such as Sberbank, the largest Russian bank, and VTB Bank, one of the largest banks in Russia with the state as the largest shareholder.
In addition, as an important international financial hub, Belgium with institutions such as the securities giant Euroclear in Brussels has blocked 217.1 billion euros in transactions that have been banned since the full-scale war in Ukraine.
Francis Adyns, the spokesman for the FPS Finance, says he is not allowed to clarify which sanctioned persons or companies have the largest amounts frozen. "All we can say about that is that in the latest wave of sanctions we have found names that have had large sums of assets frozen." The last time Belgium published figures on this, in April, it was 3.5 billion euros. Adyns says that no real estate has yet been targeted in Belgium under financial sanctions.
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