JRL NEWSWATCH: “Christine Lagarde says U.S. plan to raise debt against Russian assets carries legal risk” – Financial Times
“Comments from European Central Bank chief point to transatlantic rift over use of seized funds”
“… Lagarde … [said] … ‘I have seen four different … proposals to circumvent what many other jurists or lawyers — including in some [U.S.] administrations … — regard as a very serious legal obstacle ….’ She added that [the] work was ‘ongoing’ …. ‘Moving from freezing the assets, to confiscating them, to disposing of them is something that needs to be looked at very carefully’ … [that] could entail ‘breaking the international order that you want to protect; that you would want Russia to respect.’ … [A] G7 [statement] … said … ‘We reaffirm our determination to ensure that Russia pays for the damage it has caused to Ukraine. Russia’s sovereign assets in our jurisdictions will remain immobilised until then, consistent with our respective legal systems.’ … ‘We will continue working on all possible avenues by which immobilised Russian sovereign assets could be made use of to support Ukraine, consistent with international law and our respective legal systems, with a view to update our leaders ahead of the Apulia Summit in June.’ …”
Roughly €260bn worth of Russian assets have put on hold by the West since the Kremlin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.