“Russia rejects Easter truce” • Freezing 633 million euros in Russian assets

Dutch financial institutions have frozen approximately €633 million in Russian assets in connection with sanctions against Russia. In addition, more than 274 million euros have been frozen in financial transactions. This is what Foreign Minister Hoekstra wrote in a letter to the House of Representatives. Customs also placed 20 ships under stricter control, two of which were “frozen” because of their ownership of Russians on the sanctions list.

About two weeks ago it was announced that about 516 million euros had been frozen in the Netherlands. In other countries, such as France (22 billion euros) and Belgium (10 billion euros), more funds were frozen. Hoekstra writes that this can be explained, for example, by Belgium’s position on global stock trading and international payments.

Hoekstra writes that some media outlets paint a picture of the billions of sanctioned Russian party assets located in the Netherlands, or the billions that were leaked because the Netherlands acted too late. In response to this photo, an investigation was launched and, according to Hoekstra, it turned out that there did not appear to be any significant unfrozen property of persons or parties on the sanctions list.

According to Hoekstra, the transfer of assets cannot be ruled out soon after the sanctions are imposed. There are no indications of this happening on a large scale.