MOSCOW: Russia has condemned the US government's plan to transfer assets seized from Russian citizens to Ukraine, saying such a move would eliminate personal property protections and undermine public confidence in the global financial system.
Following the Justice Department's announcement that it would transfer "seized" Russian assets to Kyiv, the Russian embassy in the US accused Washington of "blatant disregard for generally accepted legal norms" in a statement released Thursday night.
Risky precedents like this only harm America's reputation as a "bastion" of free enterprise. It added that the decision was a "violation of fundamental American values that erroneously seemed unshakable," undermining confidence in both the American and international financial systems as well as the security of the dollar's jurisdiction.
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The asset transfer plan was first presented by US Vice President Joe Biden in April, when he suggested that any assets seized and believed to be "linked to the Russian kleptocracy" could be used to "support Ukraine". should be done.
Congress needed to change several laws for the plan to work, and the DOJ confirmed Thursday that those changes were made largely as part of a $1.7 trillion spending package it approved late last year.
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Russia's central bank has about $300 billion in assets that Washington and its allies have also seized, but they have yet to find a legal basis for taking that asset outright.
Last week, a spokeswoman for the Russian Foreign Ministry, Maria Zakharova, described the asset confiscation as "a completely illegitimate measure, violating generally accepted standards of commercial and international law."
She warned that any attempt to transfer Russia-owned wealth to Ukraine would be a violation of property rights and that Moscow would retaliate with "appropriate" countermeasures.
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According to data from the Atlantic Council, a Washington, DC-based think tank with strong ties to the NATO alliance, more than 1,000 Russian entities and 1,300 individuals are currently under US sanctions. But the US government has not disclosed the full value of its holdings in Russian assets.