By Achille Campagna

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San Marino, 3 May 2025

 

I represent many families, 75 victims of atrocities, victims of Russia’s aggression on Ukraine, and I learn from the press (https://www.kyivpost.com/post/51946) that Euroclear, the major clearing house holding the bulk of Russian assets in the West, is going to issue payouts to a category of investors that saw their money confiscated in Russia.

 

Euroclear is just the entity materially holding the assets, while the initiative is coming from investors, seeking compensation out of those assets, a request that apparently has been upheld by the Belgian financial authority overseeing Euroclear.

 

Now then, it is unclear to me how this group of investors could convince the Belgian authority to do what the West is trying to accomplish since 2022, and I can’t dispute - for lack of information - the legal basis under which things are developing. I assume these claimants have sued the owner of those assets in court, and a court has rendered judgment, or issued a protective order.

 

In case that did not happen under a judicial order, well, I strongly feel that the only administrative way would have been through the authority under which the assets have been frozen, which is the one of States that implemented the sanction package, first in 2014, then in 2022 and beyond.

 

Based on the news, the investors’ claims seem to target by reciprocity the ‘private wealth’, that is the subset of those frozen Russian assets held by individuals, like oligarchs, companies, and entities other than the Russian central bank. It should be noted, in this regard, that such a subset of wealth might stand in front of claims by the victims of atrocities for which a court like the ICC, for example, is investigating. We have no idea whether the ICC has been consulted or made aware of these undertakings.

 

The sanctions were and are meant to deprive the RF of resources to further the war on Ukraine. That’s the scope they serve, and confiscating the assets does not seem to stand in conflict with such purpose.

 

However, frustration with the frozen assets is building among the victims: there is simply nothing for them, the end-game keeps being zero, no matter what new developments come up from time to time.

 

The debate on frozen assets has been revolving around anything except compensating the victims directly, despite the fact that courts of law are dealing with their cases, and despite the existence of an institution now, the Register of Damages for Ukraine (RD4U), tasked with recording the damages exactly in view of future disbursements to the victims. Compensations that will be handed out in a rational, organic way, accounting for priorities.

 

While States have been very cautious in touching the frozen assets, ultimately using only the interests as collateral for loans to Ukraine - to defend the UN Charter with her lives - we learn today that pecuniary damages are going to be paid without hesitation to a category of subjects that ranks many folds lower than the victims of atrocities.

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Part of the victims of atrocities had their cases heard since before 2022, when Ukrainian courts awarded damages in relation to 2014 and 2015 facts, and there are now also judgments concerning the 2022 invasion. Those awards have never been enforced, and lawyers are trying to have the judgments recognized abroad.

 

I definitely call upon Euroclear and any supervisory authority to engage with the stakeholders such as to open up this compensation avenue to the victims of atrocities, yet the point is the process must be handled by a centralized authority, as it is unthinkable that a single stakeholder from a single country be allowed to dispose of resources that stand in front of immense needs to safeguard the highest values, from assisting Ukraine in defending the world legal order to fully compensating the victims of war crimes for the first time in history.

 

Victims lawyers already took steps before international courts to have the assets set aside for the victims, the Strasburg Court, as well, has been ruling on the same facts forming the grounds for the sanctions package; however, courts are too slow, and safeguards in the meantime must come from the administrative authority, otherwise the funds will be allocated in an unfair manner, potentially prioritizing merely pecuniary interests against those of victims of the most heinous crimes.

 

I call upon all the stakeholders to review any disbursement of the frozen assets with a view to properly account for Ukraine victims’ needs.