Luxembourg freezes Russian assets worth €2.5 billion

Luxembourg authorities have frozen Russian assets worth €2.5 billion following sanctions imposed on the country in the wake of the invasion of Ukraine, Finance Minister Yuriko Backes told parliament on Tuesday, in the first official disclosure of the amount frozen in the Grand Duchy.

The total is the result of the country's implementation of EU sanctions against Russia, Backes told a joint meeting of the parliament's Justice and Finance Commissions, held behind closed doors.    

It comes just days after parliamentarians had called on the government to step up its efforts to cut off Russian businesses hit by EU sanctions, criticising the fact that Luxembourg had yet to disclose how much money it had frozen, unlike some of its neighbours.    

Several organisations are working on enforcing sanctions in Luxembourg, such as the CSSF, banks, the sanctioned companies themselves, as well as the finance ministry and the prosecution. The finance ministry said last week that it had so far received "hundreds" of notifications of Russian asset freezes in Luxembourg.

Switzerland last week reported it had frozen €5.6 billion in sanctioned Russian assets, in the first indication of the scale of wealth parked abroad by rich Russians close to President Vladimir Putin.  

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