A Russian wanted to steal half a million dollars from Euroclear
Individual entrepreneur Alexey Popov filed a claim against the Belgian depository Euroclear bank in the Arbitration Court of the Krasnodar Territory, as follows from the file of arbitration cases. According to SPARK, on September 7 the case was accepted for proceedings. The amount of claims is $521,662 (about 51.2 million rubles). Broker Aton is indicated as third parties.
The claim was registered on August 22, but on August 28 the court left the case without progress due to the plaintiff’s violation of a number of procedural requirements when filing, including failure to send the claim to the defendant in French, as indicated in the case materials. Popov is obliged to provide the court with evidence of sending a copy of the statement of claim and the documents attached to it to the defendant in French by September 18.
Also on September 6, the Moscow Arbitration Court registered a claim by another individual against Euroclear – Alexander Kalin, as follows from the court file. Details of the case are not disclosed.
In total, over twenty claims have already been filed against Euroclear in Russia for a total amount of more than 200 billion rubles. The plaintiffs include both private investors and professional participants in the securities market, including Sovcombank, Management Company Pervaya and the Ural Bank for Development and Reconstruction, as follows from the file of arbitration cases.
Bank St. Petersburg managed to restore access to blocked securities. In February, a Russian court recovered $107 million from Euroclear in favor of the bank, and in April it became known about the unfreezing of assets in Belgium for a comparable amount – about $110 million.
Some investors seek to unlock their assets by applying for a license in Belgium or Luxembourg, the countries where Euroclear and Clearstream depositories are located. At the end of August, a Russian investor was able to withdraw his assets worth $2 million (RUB 191.4 million), frozen in the Belgian Euroclear depository, Vedomosti wrote.
At the beginning of August, it became known that the Belgian Treasury had issued a license to Expobank to unblock its own assets in NSD’s Euroclear accounts. At the same time, the Russian Digital Broker and the insurer Tinkoff Insurance received refusals. The application of the Tinkoff Investments broker to unlock its own and client assets is still being considered, a representative of the group previously clarified.
The Russian authorities have developed a mechanism for the exchange of assets between Russian and foreign investors – Finance Minister Anton Siluanov announced the preparation of such a decree by the government and the Central Bank at the end of August, Deputy Minister Alexei Moiseev clarified on September 1 that the document is almost ready. A representative of the Central Bank later explained to Vedomosti that foreigners will be able to buy back the assets of Russians frozen abroad with money from type C accounts. Individuals with portfolios up to 100,000 rubles may be included in the first wave of exchange and unblocking, First Deputy Chairman of the Central Bank Vladimir said on September 1 Chistyukhin. The Ministry of Finance expects that the unfreezing process for this category of investors will be completed before the end of this year.
