Court rules Belgium had no right to withhold Russian bank’s assets

Belgium’s highest administrative court has struck down a government decision not to release the frozen assets of Russia’s BCS Bank. The authorities failed to establish a clear procedure for handling such requests and delegated responsibility to an agency with no legal authority to process them, the court, known as the Council of State, concluded.The bank’s funds were frozen alongside Russia’s sovereign assets as part of EU sanctions imposed following the escalation of the Ukraine conflict in February 2022. Kiev’s Western backers froze some $300 billion in Russian sovereign assets, with most held at Brussels-based depository Euroclear. BCS Bank’s funds were blocked because they had been placed with Euroclear through Russia’s National Settlement Depository (NSD), which was targeted by the restrictions. In January 2023, the private Russian lender applied to the Belgian Treasury for the release of the funds. The Treasury rejected the request in July 2024, arguing that BCS had failed to demonstrate the termination of its relationship with the NSD and that transferring the funds to an Armenian bank would make it impossible for Belgian authorities to monitor their eventual use. The decisi...