A new executive order from President Joe Biden would give the US more authority to speed up the sale of assets seized from Russians and use the proceeds to support Ukraine.
Cash in US bank accounts, as well as a $90 million yacht belonging to Viktor Vekselberg, which was captured earlier this month in Spain, are currently under US control.
The US requested that the Fijian authorities seize the 325-foot superyacht belonging to Suleiman Kerimov. According to the Department of Justice, the FBI found incriminating evidence against Kerimov.
A European Commission official told Insider that the European Union taskforce has been busy, grabbing more than $30 billion in boats, helicopters, real estate, and artwork.
The US and the EU are joined by the UK, Australia, Canada, and Japan as members of the Russian Elites, Proxies, and Oligarchs Task Force.
Although the White House says it will improve our ability to enforce foreign restraint and forfeiture orders in the United States, experts told Insider the process is still unclear.
Benjamin Maltby, a partner at Keystone Law in the UK and an expert in yacht and luxury asset law, said that transferring a yacht to the US or the UK would incur considerable expense. Selling them in place under US authority will add another layer of unnecessary administrative expense and delay.
The CEO of Elucidate pointed to the period after the 1979 Iranian revolution, when a lack of a legal framework to divert funds frozen by Western governments meant they remained untouched in locked accounts for decades.
When the sanctions against Iran were lightened, there was a big export of cash, and Republicans protested that the US was giving money to Iran.
You cannot use those assets for something else. There is no precedent or a clear framework for how that could happen.
The Justice Department announced on April 4 that Vekselberg's yacht would be subject to forfeiture for violating US bank fraud, money laundering, and sanction statutes.
She said it would be difficult for individual civil or criminal forfeiture actions to have a large impact on the rebuilding of Ukraine.
The time spent in legal limbo can add up to a lot of money for the governments and their taxpayers.
Mosman said that members of the REPO Task Force would be more willing to cooperate with the US in forfeiture actions if there was a clear pathway for the seized property to be used to clean up the harms of Russian aggression toward Ukraine.
Shiedel said that some of the wealth of the oligarchs would not necessarily be tied to Russia as they have made their fortune outside of Russia. Some of the wealth of the person was generated in Switzerland on the back of activities there.
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