The US Treasury began to send refusals on applications of Russians to unfreeze assets // RBC: the US Treasury refused to Russian investors to unlock assets

The Office of Foreign Assets Control of the US Treasury (OFAC) made the first decisions to unlock the assets of Russian investors. According to RBC, so far all the decisions received have been negative. OFAC is motivated by a possible link between the applicants and organizations that have been sanctioned against Iran.

The lawyer of the service Razmorozka.com Olga Plekhanova said that her firm received 10 refusals from the American regulator. They are all dated September 25. One of the replies received indicated that the applicant’s appeal included an organization or entities sanctioned under Operation Economic Rogue (a package of measures against Iran and its supporters). On September 14, the United States also imposed additional sanctions against VTB because of its ties with Iran. In this regard, lawyers admitted that the reason for the refusal could serve as the presence of VTB in the chain of storage of blocked assets, but the OFAC response does not explicitly say this.

“VTB is often found in old depository chains. Some assets are still in VTB, but for many the bank was only a historical link: the papers were transferred to other banks long ago, and VTB remained only in the description of where they were once stored, Plekhanova explained.

In 2022, the assets of Russian investors were blocked in the European depositories Euroclear and Clearstream. The volume of frozen funds was estimated at 6 trillion rubles. The Belgian Euroclear explained that in addition to the license of the regulator of Belgium, an OFAC license is needed to unlock securities that have a connection with the US jurisdiction. In 2025, the US regulator began to more actively consider applications of Russians to unlock assets.