JAKARTA - The European Union has so far frozen 13.8 billion euros in assets owned by Russian oligarchs, individuals and entities sanctioned over Moscow's war against Ukraine, the group's top judicial official said.
The official said the bulk of the funding came from five of the EU's 27 member states alone, calling on other countries to act.
It is known that currently there are at least 98 entities and nearly 1,160 Russian or related individuals who have been blacklisted by the European Union after the invasion of Ukraine.
"For now, we have frozen funds coming from oligarchs and other entities worth 13.8 billion euros, which is quite a lot," EU Justice Commissioner Didier Reynders said Tuesday.
"But mostly, more than 12 billion are from the five member states, so we need to keep convincing other countries to do the same," he told reporters as he arrived at a meeting of national justice ministers in the Czech capital, Prague.
However, Reynders did not identify the five countries. He said he expected a final political deal after the summer on new legal tools to make offenses or try to bypass criminal offense sanctions everywhere in the European Union, which is not happening this time.
The policy, which is meant to curb circumvention of restrictions by transferring assets to unsanctioned family members, could then take effect in the fall.
"In that case, the money will be returned to the fund for the Ukrainian people, to return the money to the Ukrainian people after the confiscation of assets," he said.
Reynders and the ministers also discussed cooperation with Eurojust, the bloc's body for criminal justice, in building evidence of alleged war crimes in Ukraine, which was attacked by Russia from land, sea and air last February.
He said Eurojust would retain all evidence and should cooperate closely with the bloc's member states, 14 of which have their own national investigations into the war.
"The most important thing is very good coordination, not duplicating different situations, and gathering all the evidence in the same place," Reynders said.
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