All income is recorded: investors are losing money in the struggle to unlock assets
In the struggle to unlock their assets, the Russians began to incur large losses, Izvestia found out. In July 2025, the Russian court sided with the Europeans in the case of the claim of a retail investor. They froze $9 million from him, and he won only the proceeds from them. Moreover, the amount turned out to be less than the process costs requested by Euroclear (about 1 million rubles). This may happen again with other plaintiffs — now there are 267 of them. The court ruled that the freezing of Russian assets cannot be considered a loss. And all expenses are borne by the losing party. What options remain for investors with blocked securities is in the Izvestia article.
Why investors can remain indebted to Euroclear
Russian investors are starting to lose money in the struggle for their securities, which were blocked in the West. This applies to those who have filed a lawsuit in the court of the Russian Federation against the Belgian depository Euroclear.
In July of this year, the Moscow Arbitration Court sided with the Europeans. He denied a private investor's claim against Euroclear to unlock his assets for $9 million. This decision was made following an appeal. The first court ordered Euroclear to compensate him for losses from all frozen assets. However, the second instance decided otherwise. The court recognized that ownership of the securities in itself does not provide grounds for recovery of damages. That is, freezing does not mean the loss of papers as such.
As a result, the court ordered the European depository to compensate the investor for only $ 21.5 thousand — the income on his securities. At the same time, the main amount of assets remained frozen. The court pointed out that sanctions are not force majeure, and the investor did not even try to contact the Belgian Ministry of Finance to unlock funds.
Therefore, the Russian's demands were considered premature, and he was urged to try to request permission from the European authorities to return assets. In addition, the costs of this investor for the trial, taking into account the lawyers and the state fee, turned out to be more than the money that he would actually receive.
Other investors who have filed a Russian lawsuit against the Belgian depository Euroclear risk facing the same problem and losses. The loser risks paying all the defendant's expenses for the trial, including the state fee. This practice is usually used in courts at the request of the winning party. In other words, he can actually bear all the court costs. And they sometimes reach several million rubles.
— Of course, this is bad news for other plaintiffs. In fact, the decisions of higher authorities, especially arbitration appeals and the Supreme Court, are a guideline for judges and lawyers. This decision reinforces a very important judicial logic," said the head of the international legal service. Razmorozka.com Alexey Bogdanov.
The Russian court decided not to interfere with the procedure by which investors should apply to Europe to unlock their assets, explained Yulia Khandoshko, CEO of the European broker Mind Money. If a person is not under sanctions, they can try to get permission from local authorities, but this is a matter for the European Union, not the Russian courts.
The court also believes that freezing assets is not the same as losing them, the expert added. The money and securities still belong to investors, they are just temporarily unavailable. Therefore, it is impossible to claim compensation through the court until the assets have been permanently lost.
"The court has consolidated in its ruling the position that an investor should be prepared for risks," said financial lawyer Olga Plekhanova.
If the investor's structure and behavior are similar to this case, the risk of refusal to refund funds is extremely high, Alexey Bogdanov said. The Russian managed to return only the income on securities, but usually these amounts are not large. At the same time, it will not even be possible to get them from Euroclear, since the Belgian depository does not have property in the Russian Federation that could be recovered.
In general, when papers are blocked, a person loses the opportunity to use them. This negates the very essence of property rights, said Yan Goncharov, Senior Associate at the Delcredere Bar Association. If the court finds that such a situation does not create a loss for investors, then this undermines confidence in property rights and may have a bad effect on its protection in the future.
How to unfreeze blocked assets
— The most important task of a Russian investor is to gain access to the free disposal of his assets. The main decision here will depend on the regulator of the country in which these assets were blocked," said Dmitry Lesnov, Deputy General Director for Brokerage at Finam.
The only EU assets in Russia are the frozen funds of Western clients in type C accounts, which are blocked as counter—sanctions, Alexey Bogdanov explained. But they are inviolable: access to them is prohibited by a special decree dated January 2024.
To file a lawsuit against Euroclear in Europe, it is important to collect documents from the broker through whom the frozen assets were purchased. Then they are properly processed and submitted to the Belgian Ministry of Finance and the Office of Foreign Assets Control of the United States (OFAC). This is necessary in order to obtain individual licenses for unblocking securities.
For approval, an investor must meet a number of requirements:
The frozen assets were purchased prior to the imposition of sanctions against NSD (until June 3, 2022);
the person himself should not be on the SDN lists, that is, he should not be under sanctions.;
It is necessary to prove that there is no connection with organizations that are subject to restrictions.;
It is important to open an account with a European broker, which will potentially receive funds.;
if the amount of assets exceeds €100,000, it is important to have friends or relatives in the EU in order to withdraw funds to them, or temporarily cease to be a resident of the Russian Federation.;
It is necessary to provide a letter from the guarantor — legal entity in the EU, which confirms that the recipient of the blocked assets will not spend them on the directions prohibited by the sanctions.
It makes sense for investors with a portfolio of $15,000 or more to apply to the Ministries of Finance of Belgium and the United States to unlock assets, the press service said. Razmorozka.com . This is a very long (at least 14 months) and complicated process, so legal services in this case will be quite expensive — about €15-40 thousand. For holders of a small amount of investments, unblocking may be unprofitable.
To restore market confidence, we need real ways to unlock assets, Dmitry Lesnov added. The government and the Central Bank have already taken steps — for example, they offered to exchange frozen securities for up to 100,000 rubles, but only a third of all applications were approved. Such measures should also be used, but for more serious amounts, because in total, Russians have assets worth hundreds of billions of rubles blocked.
In addition, the Russian court pointed to the possibility of selling frozen securities on the over-the-counter market, said financial lawyer Olga Plekhanova. This can be done only for 70-90% of their actual cost, said Evgeniya Amelkina, director of the Eastern Legal Alliance. But this is important for those investors who urgently need money, because this is a very unprofitable deal for them.
Much will also depend on the US and EU sanctions — if Russia's relations with them improve, then restrictions may begin to ease in one and a half to three years, concluded economist Andrei Barkhota. The first step is to moderate aggressive rhetoric. Then we need to move on to concrete plans to reduce tensions and involve the EU in negotiations. In the meantime, the confrontation is only intensifying, and against this background, it is difficult to hope for the unblocking of assets.
Переведено сервисом «Яндекс Переводчик»
