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Why France is leading the EU in seizing Russian assets

Of the Russian assets seized in the EU under post-Ukraine sanctions rules, almost 60 percent of them are in France. Here's why the French government is leading Europe when it comes to enforcing sanctions on the Russian state and its oligarchs.

Published: 28 April 2022 16:17 CEST
Updated: 30 April 2022 10:37 CEST
Why France is leading the EU in seizing Russian assets
The yacht belonging to Russian oligarch Alexei Kuzmichev, which was frozen by French authorities. (Photo by Valery HACHE / AFP)

According to a European Commission assessment (dated April 5th), France has seized or frozen almost €24 billion in Russian assets – making up more than 60 percent of the total assets seized or frozen in the EU (about €35 billion).

So why has France seized so much more than its neighbours?

Assets

Part of the explanation lies in the simple fact that France has a lot of areas that appeal to the super-rich, of all nationalities.

The “Bay of Billionaires,” located near Antibes along the Mediterranean, has been a playground for rich Russians since the fall of the Soviet Union. On the Atlantic coast, Biarritz is also a popular spot to buy a vacation home for Russian elites, including members of the Putin family.

And then of course there is Paris.

The capital city is a hot spot for tourism and real estate investment, and the wealthy from across the world enjoy buying property in the beautiful and historic city centre – especially the four central arrondissements. In 2018, so many of these properties remained vacant that these four districts merged into a single one for electoral purposes, as not enough people lived there at the time and local elections had become too small. 

Cash reserves

But the seized €24 billion isn’t all made up of holiday homes, helicopters and yachts – a significant chunk of that is Russian central bank assets.

French finance minister Bruno Le Maire said that of the total, around €2 billion is made up of private assets such as mansions, yachts and helicopters, and the remaining €22 billion is Russian Central Bank reserves.

Russia’s central bank stores a large amount of its reserve abroad as an insurance policy, should it need to prop up the ruble or avert inflation. Roughly 12 percent of the Russian central bank’s assets are with France. 

READ ALSO: Côte d’Azur mansions, jets, yachts: What is France likely to seize from Russian oligarchs?

Financial assets are also represented in other countries’ seizure totals – for example, Belgium has reportedly frozen €10 billion in Russian assets, a significant chunk being frozen transactions normally made via the SWIFT international payment system, which is located in La Hulpe, outside Brussels.

Taskforce

But as well as having a lot of Russian assets in the country, France has also demonstrated strong political will when it comes to enforcing sanctions.

The government has created a taskforce – largely made up of customs officers and tax inspectors – to enforce sanctions. Before seizing property, the officers on the taskforce need to pick through the complicated web of shell companies and proxy ownership in order to establish what assets the oligarchs have.

The French Ministry of the Economy published a list of 41 properties owned by Russian oligarchs, and that list is expected to grow as more assets are discovered.

Currently, the majority of the properties on the list belong to just eight sanctioned billionaires.

Roman Abramovich is among the billionaires to make the naughty list – specifically via his €230 million Château de la Croë in Antibes on the French Riviera, where the former king Edward VIII lived after his abdication of the British crown and contentious marriage to Wallis Simpson.

Jérôme Fournel, the director general of public finance, told French daily The Parisian, that the taskforce does this via the several different files at its disposal, including the Ficoba registry (national file of bank and similar accounts), which lists in great detail all current accounts, savings accounts, securities accounts and safety deposit boxes opened in France.

The taskforce also works to map oligarchs’ assets and untangle sometimes complex financial arrangements.

Then, they access real estate dossiers, and as soon as an apartment or a villa belonging to one of the people on the list is identified, they instantly update the list. They quickly alert notaries to flag properties that cannot be sold or rented. For the moment however, the total number of oligarchs with property in France, as well as the total value of such properties has not been published.

The sanctions list continues to grow: now almost 900 people are on the list following the “atrocities committed in Bucha.” As the list expands, so too will the workload of the French taskforce.

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JOHN LICHFIELD

OPINION: When the mask slips, Le Pen’s party reveals its fundamental racism

The French far-right party's new leader is smooth, handsome and plausible - writes John Lichfield - but when the mask slips we see that the party's fundamental ideology remains deeply racist.

Published: 26 June 2024 12:12 CEST
OPINION: When the mask slips, Le Pen's party reveals its fundamental racism

The talented Monsieur Bardella wishes you well.

He wishes the poor well and he wishes the wealthy well. He wishes the old well and he wishes the young well. He wishes the Right well and he wishes the Left well.

His programme is partly populist Left, partly populist Right and now, bizarrely, includes several ideas copy-pasted from Macronism (formerly known as the blood-sucking elite).

Bardella is like a politician invented by AI: plausible to the point of being unctuous; all things to all people (except the brown or black ones); gently brutal-looking; programmed with information and disinformation that he can seamlessly access (unlike Marine Le Pen).

Is he possibly a robot?

Bardella’ performance in the first TV debate of this cursed election was impressive.

But the mask did slip a couple of times.

He accidentally admitted that the Rassemblement National’s alternative to the Macron pension reform – headline “retirement at 60 (for some)” –  would mean many some other people retiring at 66 or 67. Whoops.

Bardella’s face at that moment was like that of a 12-year-old caught cheating at cards. Maybe, he is not a robot after all.

The Prime ministerial candidate of the Far Right Rassemblement National also refused to give any credit to the contribution to French life made by immigrants and the sons and daughters of immigrants.

Not the footballers, not the nurses, not the doctors, not the cleaners, not the scientists. Not even his Italian grandparents nor his Algerian great grand-parent.

The PM Gabriel Attal tried to push him on this point; so did the Left wing representative Manuel Bompard (not a man I like but a spokesman who defended his camp well).

Bardella refused to say a good word in favour of brown or black French people. He refused to acknowledge the ideological – and fundamentally – racist basis for the RN’s plans to exclude “dual nationals” from some senior government jobs.

Explained: the far-right’s plan to ban dual-nationals from certain jobs 

In practise that will means marginalising Franco-Algerians or Franco-Moroccans, not Franco-Germans or Franco-Luxembourgers. There is no practical justification for this policy. It is a way of signalling that, if the RN came to power, the single, indivisible French Republic will end. There will be the white French people and there will be the rest.

Already, the prospect of the Far Right winning a majority in parliament over the next two weekends has produced a minor explosion of racist remarks in social media and on the street.   

Are all the 33-35 percent of French voters prepared to vote for Bardella and Le Pen racists? No, of course, they are not.

But race – and an exaggerated sense of threat to French identity – are an important part of this extraordinary mud-slide of support for the Far Right in the opinion polls.

READ ALSO: What is ‘national preference’ and how would it hurt foreigners in France?

There is also something else at work which is near-hysterical and difficult to combat. In the minds of many French voters, the Far Right has become the “antidote to Macronism”, the opposite to Emmanuel Macron and therefore “a good thing”.

It is as if many French people – including many who should know better including the editors of Le Figaro – have turned a blind eye to the history of Lepennism and much of its present.

Anything said to point out the residual racism of the RN and the anti-European charlatanry of its economic programme  reinforces, rather than weakens their choice. Bardella and Le Pen are the opposite of all that has gone before. Bring it on.

This is partly Emmanuel Macron’s fault. He promised to be a revolutionary and different kind of politician. He turned out to be another mainstream reformer. He made no effort to build a grassroots, political  movement. He is given no credit for his successes (lower unemployment, cleaner air). He has become hated beyond all logic or reason but that, itself, is a calamitous failure for a politician.

By sweeping away what remained of the failed centre-right in and centre-left in 2017 Macron created a new political duality of Centre v  Far Right. This served him well electorally through two presidential elections.

But the French are a people devoted to regular “alternance” ie detesting and frequently booting out their leaders. For many previously moderate voters, the only gut-satisfying alternative to the irrationally detested centre is now a cosmetically softened Far Right.

This is an absurd and unhealthy situation which will do France no good and could cause much permanent harm. Will the Far Right win a majority on July 7th?

The opinion polls suggest not. But they are drifting gradually in Bardella’s direction.

In June 2016, the UK took careful aim and shot itself in the foot. I fear that France may be about to shoot itself in the heart and the head.

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