Belgium’s supreme administrative court has ruled that a decision by the country’s treasury department refusing to release frozen Russian assets was illegal.
The court, known as the Council of State, ruled that the Administrator General of the Treasury lacked the proper legal competence to determine whether or not to release the assets.
The September 11 ruling was first reported by De Tijd on Wednesday, and shared with OCCRP.
The case originates from a request submitted by Russia’s BCS Bank in January 2023 to unfreeze its securities and cash, which had been blocked at Brussels-based securities manager Euroclear.
The assets were frozen following E.U. sanctions imposed in 2022 on Moscow's main securities holder, the National Settlement Depository, in response to Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
In July 2024, the Belgian treasury rejected BCS Bank’s request to unfreeze its securities and cash. The treasury alleged that the lender had failed to prove it had fully severed ties with Russia’s National Settlement Depository.
The Council of State ruling does not necessarily mean the frozen funds will be released.
"We are studying the judgment and examining its possible consequences," Ilse Coopman, a spokesperson for Belgian Finance Minister Jan Jambon, told De Tijt. "Once that analysis is completed, we will be able to communicate further."
The judgment arrived amid ongoing legal battles over funds caught in a web of Western sanctions, which OCCRP, De Tijd and Follow the Money previously reported on. Over 200 petitions have been filed with the Council of State challenging treasury decisions on frozen assets and blocked transactions.
Reporters found that much of the 258 billion euros’ worth of blocked transactions and frozen assets (about $270 billion) does not actually belong to Kremlin cronies, or Russian state or corporate entities. Instead, a lot of it belongs to investors who are not sanctioned.
