Lawyers have begun speaking about the possibility that applications for unblocking assets via Euroclear may stop being accepted. RBC looked into whether such risks are real and what form they might take.

The Treasury has not yet officially announced any cessation of acceptance after December 31, but lawyers told RBC that the issue has already been raised in meetings with its representatives. We examine whether the asset unblocking process may change — and, if so, how exactly.

Foreign assets of Russian private investors have been blocked since spring 2022 due to sanctions imposed on Russian management companies and brokers, as well as the subsequent sanctions against the National Settlement Depository (NSD). The blocking means that Russian investors cannot buy or sell foreign securities or receive payments on them — coupons, dividends, or redemptions.

Initially, the value of the blocked assets was estimated at RUB 5.7 trillion (of which assets held by individuals accounted for RUB 1.14 trillion). However, part of this amount — RUB 570 billion — was later unfrozen through a centralized exchange of assets worth RUB 10.64 billion, eurobond payments by the Ministry of Finance made from funds earmarked for foreign investors, and individual unblocking licenses.

Will Belgium stop accepting unblocking applications?

If the Belgian Ministry of Finance stops accepting applications, a corresponding decision must be published, but none has been issued so far, says Irina Rotachkova, Head of the Asset Unblocking practice at BGP Litigation.

However, a meeting did take place at the Treasury where, albeit unofficially, the issue of possible time limits for filing applications was discussed. It was held on June 23 and attended by the Administrator General and the Head of Compliance of the Belgian Treasury, Maxim Klyuchnikov, Partner at Alpine Group, told RBC.

According to him, the meeting “announced a plan to stop accepting applications for licenses roughly in autumn 2025, but no later than the end of the year.” Although this information is not official, it comes from competent representatives of the regulator and deserves the utmost attention, the expert believes. The meeting did indeed take place and there was “discussion of the issue of stopping acceptance of asset unblocking applications,” Rotachkova confirms, as does Delcredere Partner Andrey Timchuk, who spoke about it at an Aton webinar on asset unblocking.

“The rationale behind such a planned ‘closure’ of application acceptance is mainly that a lot of time has already been given and Russians have been granted many licenses anyway. If there are those who are unhappy, they can go to court,” says Sergey Alimirzoev, Managing Partner at the law firm Alimirzoev & Trofimov.

RBC sent inquiries to Euroclear and the Belgian Treasury.

Is there a strict deadline?

No date for the end of application acceptance was mentioned at the meeting (Telegram channels cited December 31, 2025), and it does not appear in any official acts either, all lawyers interviewed by RBC say. “There is no verified source for the stated date. It does not appear in EU regulatory acts,” explained Anna Abalakova, a lawyer in the special projects practice at Vegas Lex. Julia Khandoshko, CEO of the European broker Mind Money, suggested that the date may be linked to EU Regulation 2023/2878, Article 6b of which expressly provides that applications for licenses to dispose of frozen securities under the simplified procedure must be submitted no later than December 31, 2025.

As Khandoshko explained, this refers to the cessation of acceptance of collective applications, while individual applications from private individuals do not fall under the simplified procedure, so the restriction should not apply to them. Khandoshko also stressed that in unblocking matters the Belgian Treasury relies on EU regulations and does not independently adjust deadlines.

At the same time, all RBC interlocutors allowed that the Belgian Treasury may still tighten the rules for asset unblocking in the future. “The risks of such restrictions appearing are high. Despite the absence of a public regulatory ban, the Treasury may at any moment begin to de facto refuse to accept new applications, citing the end of a ‘reasonable’ filing period,” Klyuchnikov says.

This could potentially lead to litigation, Timchuk’s words suggest: “Because if the assets are blocked indefinitely and there is no unblocking mechanism, then de facto this amounts to confiscation.”

Can assets purchased from other investors be unblocked?

Another issue that has become relevant for investors in recent weeks is the unblocking of assets purchased from other investors. Trading in frozen securities was launched this spring by the Moscow Exchange and by some brokers within their internal infrastructure. The assets in these trades are sold at a significant discount (50% or more), which makes them an extremely lucrative investment idea in the event of possible unblocking.

But lawyers warn that the Belgian Treasury tracks all asset ownership chains and refuses unblocking for those who bought securities after EU sanctions were imposed on NSD (that is, after June 3, 2022). “Representatives of the Belgian Treasury stated directly that they would not issue licenses to new owners of assets acquired on the secondary market in Russia. The only possible exception may be transfers of assets by gift, since in such cases there is no financial or economic consideration,” Klyuchnikov explains.

The current practice of the Belgian Treasury when considering unblocking applications is focused on the beneficial owner who held the assets at the time the restrictions were imposed and Euroclear froze them, Abalakova confirms. According to her, in such transactions “this is more about purchasing claims to blocked assets within the Russian framework, and it does not entail any changes within the international framework.” In the international infrastructure, the assets remain frozen in Euroclear accounts of their original owners (as of the blocking date), “so this scheme is unlikely to work from the standpoint of obtaining a license,” the expert says.

Previously, even before trading was introduced on the exchange and within brokers, there were cases where investors tried to buy foreign assets from other investors at a steep discount, unblock them and make additional profit, but that is no longer possible now, Khandoshko confirms. “Everything is checked much more carefully: applications are compared with broker data and collective applications, and they look at when and from where the securities came. If it is clear that you bought them after the blocking, they will simply refuse,” the expert says.

Can assets be unblocked without an OFAC license?

Another report circulating in specialist channels concerned the purported possibility of unblocking assets without an OFAC license (the U.S. Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control). The basis for a simpler unblocking procedure is OFAC General License No. 50. It effectively authorizes the write-off of assets from accounts opened for individuals at sanctioned legal entities.

After the Moscow Exchange and the NSD within its structure came under blocking U.S. sanctions (June 12, 2024), European depositories began to require, in addition to a license from the Belgian Treasury, an OFAC license as well if investors had U.S. securities in their portfolios. This significantly complicated the process and increased the unblocking timeline (OFAC can review license applications for more than a year and a half).

But in practice, there has not been a single case in which assets with NSD in their custody chain were successfully unblocked on the basis of License No. 50, according to a memo from Delcredere lawyers published by the Investors’ Rights Protection Club (which includes Russian industry associations, brokers, asset managers, the Moscow Exchange and NSD).

“NSD (the central depository of the Russian Federation) does not service individuals, so the license cannot be applied to assets structured through NSD, given the absence of individual accounts at NSD,” the lawyers explained. Rotachkova from BGP also added that European depositories have repeatedly warned industry experts that License No. 50 is not applicable to cases involving the unblocking of private investors’ assets.

Source: https://pro.rbc.ru/demo/685d74f09a7947778250da93