German Prosecutor General’s Office Intends to Seize More than €720m of Moscow Exchange’s Assets

German Federal Prosecutor Peter Frank intends to confiscate more than €720 million from Russian funds and transfer them to the state treasury. This was first reported by Spiegel, and then the information was confirmed by the German Prosecutor General’s Office. So far, Germany has only frozen the assets of Russian companies on the EU sanctions list. Confiscation of funds from the holdings amidst sanctions has not yet taken place. As Spiegel notes, Moscow Exchange’s money, which belonged to the exchange’s “subsidiary” in the German branch of a large U.S. bank J.P. Morgan, may be seized. In June 2022, NSD fell under EU sanctions and those assets were frozen. As Spiegel reports, on the day NSD fell under sanctions, the management of the bank’s branch was trying to save these assets from being blocked. “A subsidiary” of Germany’s J.P. Morgan received an order to transfer more than €720 million to an account at Commerzbank for another subsidiary of Moscow Exchange, the National Clearing Corporation (NCC). However, the transfer was blocked due to sanctions. The Federal Government of Germany reported that in 2022 in Germany were frozen Russian assets worth just under €5bn. At the same time, according to the document of the European Commission, to which the Financial Times referred, €210bn of frozen Russian assets were in the EU countries. According to the newspaper, €191bn of assets are stored in Euroclear, and about €19bn in France.