Kremlin says White House plan to seize Russian assets is illegal

Moscow believes that the White House's plan to streamline the seizure of Russian private assets is against all legal norms.

Washington s plan to expand its authority to seize and forfeit the assets of Russian oligarchs to provide financial aid to Kiev is nothing but expropriation that tramples on the right to private property, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on Friday.

The spokesman for Russian President Vladimir Putin said this was a very dangerous precedent and that such an action would be a grave violation of any legal norms. The US administration and Congress are discussing something like that because it shows how fragile all the universally accepted foundations have become in the field of private property rights, economics and politics, as well as in the field of deep incomprehension and rejection, Peskov said.

He made his comments a day after the White House presented a set of comprehensive proposals that aim at holding Russian oligarchs and elites accountable over what the US considers the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

The proposals include a streamlined administrative authority to seize and forfeit oligarch assets. The authority, including representatives from the Departments of Treasury and Justice, should be able to forfeit the US property of Russian individuals that have been subject to sanctions if they have a connection to specified unlawful conduct. The decision would be reviewed in a federal court.

The document says that the proceeds of the forfeited property should be transferred to Ukraine to remediate the harms of Russian aggression. The House passed non-binding legislation that urges the Biden administration to sell frozen luxury assets of Russian oligarchs and provide additional military and humanitarian aid to Ukraine, according to the New York Times.

According to the paper, an earlier version of the bill, supported by Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, included a provision allowing Biden to sell off seized Russian assets and use the funds as aid to Ukraine.

The bill stumbled on resistance from the House Foreign Affairs Committee and lawyers at the American Civil Liberties Union ACLU who raised concerns about the complete absence of any due process protections in the bill, which would make an American court invalidate both the sanctions law and the sanctions itself, according to Christopher Anders, the federal policy director at the ACLU.

The bill was passed in the House by 417 votes to eight and the lawmakers turned it into a non-binding resolution.

Washington and its allies had earlier imposed a series of sanctions against Moscow over its military operation in Ukraine. The sanctions targeted Russia's finances and banking sectors as well as the aviation and space industries. Western nations also seized assets belonging to Russian businessmen considered to be close to the Kremlin.

Russia attacked its neighboring state in late February due to Ukraine failing to implement the terms of the Minsk agreements, first signed in 2014, and Moscow s eventual recognition of the Donbass republics of Donetsk and Lugansk. The German and French-brokered protocols were designed to give the breakaway regions special status within the Ukrainian state.

The Kremlin has since demanded that Ukraine officially declare itself a neutral country that will never join the US-led NATO military bloc. Kiev insists that the Russian offensive was unprovoked and has denied that it was planning to retake the two republics by force.