European Commission names conditions for unfreezing investments of Russians

The European Commission allowed settlements with the National Settlement Depository (NSD), which fell under the sanctions, where the securities of Russian investors were trapped, but subject to two conditions, Report informs referring to RBC.

First, NSD should not receive any economic benefit from such transactions. Secondly, the transactions must be approved by the regulators of the countries where NSD's foreign counterparties are registered.

Experts note that, despite the existence of clear conditions, it will not be easy to make settlements and transfer funds frozen in European depositories to the accounts of Russian investors.

Brokers, management companies and other financial market participants will need to disclose the recipients of payments in order to exclude transfers to persons subject to sanctions.

In addition, due to the requirements of the sanctions regulations, even if the investor to whom the payments are due is not under EU sanctions, the assets must still be frozen, since their holder is the sanctioned NSD.

Defrost requires a separate license from European regulators, which can take a significant amount of time to obtain.