The Duran Podcast - G7 frustration trying to seize Russian frozen assets

Episode Date: March 2, 2024

G7 frustration trying to seize Russian frozen assets

All right, Alexander, let's talk about the G7 meeting statement that they came out with. I say meeting because it was chaired by Maloney while they were in Kiev, while she was in Kiev, along with Trudeau and Ursula and Vandecro. And it was mostly a virtual video meeting of the G7. But they want to get the frozen assets. They want to steal those frozen assets, but they're still unable. to. And so they came out with a statement which reaffirms their commitment to Ukraine as long as it takes, etc. But they stopped short of announcing that they're going to steal these 300 billion in Russian assets. I believe the breakdown is 200 billion in Europe and 100 billion in the U.S.

Something like that is a breakdown of these assets. Yeah. Well, 26 billion supposedly is in London. I mean, that's a report I saw in Bloomberg. And the rest is in Euroclear. Yeah. Europe. Or most of it is in Euroclerc. Euro. Euro, 260 billion is in Euroclear.

Apparently, around 26 billion is in London and the balance is in the US. So I understand. But, you know, anyway. But anyway, going back to this G7 statement, you can see exactly what's happened. I mean, there was clearly the intention. They all go to Kiev. And I suspect that the original plan was that more of them would go to Kiev. Sunak, remember, was there recently.

Macron had thought about going Schultz when Annalina was there. They're all going to go to Kiev on the second anniversary of the start of the Special Military Operation. There was going to be the big announcement. They're going to take, they're going to seize, confiscate, steal, steal, whatever you like, the Russian confiscated frozen funds. And they're going to give them to Ukraine to assist Ukraine in reconstruction. And it didn't happen. They weren't able to do it.

The legal advice has been clearly overwhelmingly negative. And we're now getting more and more reports that beyond the advice on the lawyers, there's also been warnings from the fire. financial world. So supposedly, this is according to Bloomberg, the big international banks have warned the British government that if you start seizing confiscating Russian assets in that way, it will have an immediate effect on the credibility of the city of London as a major financial centre. I think we discussed it in the previous programme. The CEO of Euroclair came out publicly and basically said this is a disastrous idea.

Don't even think about it. It will have an immediate effect on the credibility of the European financial system, the Eurozone financial system, and it will also destroy the credibility of Euroclear itself, which is a key European institution. It's known that the ECB is strongly opposed to this. It's also, I understand, opposed by the Fed in the United States. So they ran up against all of this.

The lawyers weren't coming along into line. The legal advice they got, which we discussed in a recent program, from the various lawyers that they found, was completely unconvincing. I mean, you know, we remember we said on the program, it wasn't a legal analysis. It was it was straightforwardly declaratory. which is not how legal cases are built. So they had to stop. And they said that the funds, the Russian assets, will remain immobilized. Nice word.

You know, it was frozen, until such time as Russia pays for Ukraine's reconstruction. There's an interesting words. The interest will be used to support Ukraine, but the capital will not be affected. Apparently, Euroclercay that the interest belongs to them. It doesn't belong to the Russians. I suspect there's legal arguments about this, and I would not be surprised if the Russians bring a case over that as well.

But anyway, we'll leave that for a discussion for another time. But the assets themselves, the $300 billion, so far they haven't been able to touch. But despite all of this, Again, if you read the statement carefully, they're still looking to do it. It's just that they haven't found that legal key. And they're saying, you know, we're going away, we're going to come back, we're going to have a summit meeting in Apulia, and we want more legal advice prior to that meeting.

So basically what they're telling the legal community is, look, we still want to do this thing. We're absolutely determined to do this thing. Find us some legally full-proof way so that we can do it. Find us some legally foolproof way so that we can go to the bank and steal the money that's in the bank and call it ours. Because that's essentially what they're asking to do. Yeah, I was going to ask you that question. The $300 billion question, does this close the book on the frozen assets? Are they giving up? No, they're not giving up. Are we going to get to a point where we see a type of rerun of the Swift, let's say, the whole Swift issue?

Way, way back in the beginning of the SMO, where Biden ignored the Fed, he ignored advisors, he ignored everybody. And the Biden White House says, we don't care. We're closing down Russia's access to Swift. I mean, are we going to get to that point where the Biden White House, because there is no legal justification. They've been looking for months and years now. It doesn't exist. So my question to you is when are they going to get to the point where they just say, you know what, Euroclear, CEO, ECB, lawyers, financial experts, the Fed, we don't care. We're not even going to tell you.

We're not even going to tell you that we stole this money. We're going to steal this money. Are we going to get to that point? And if we are, then when? Right, the answer is that if it's left to this administration, if this administration remains in political control in the United States, then sooner or later we will get to that point. Because the one thing that all that the absolutely obvious by now to anybody who's been following this administration carefully is that it does not accept legal constraints. We've seen that in the way it conducts things within the United States. and we've seen that the way it conducts things in international relations and as you absolutely rightly say

it doesn't let a little thing like the unanimous advice and warnings of the experts get in its way either so if the administration remains in control sooner or later they will do it even if they can't get the full proof legal advice which, as you rightly say, doesn't exist. I mean, literally, you know, I was a sort of semi-joke. But it really is like saying, you know, I want, you know, I'm a bank rob. I'm alcophone. I want you to provide me with legal advice which says I can go to a bank and steal the money inside it. I mean, it is on that kind of level.

That's the kind of legal advice they're looking at for. But, you know, even if they don't get it, even if it's, It's not really the kind of full-proof legal advice they say they need. They will eventually do it. They'll always find, as I said, some lawyer, some lawyers somewhere who will tell them, well, you know, you're entitled to do what you want to do because there's a moral case and a moral case is ultimately a legal case. Something threadbare like that.

The reason they've been held up to this point is because there is concern in Europe. There's concern in Germany. There's concern in France. There's concern clearly in Belgium. The European financial people are concerned. But ultimately, if they are still the power, sooner or later they will do it, just as they did it with Swift, just as they did it even more, with the original freezing of the Russian assets, which itself, in my opinion, And in my opinion, you know, most people who've looked at this, violated sovereign immunity law. The question is, will the Biden administration retain full control?

One senses that that control is slipping, that the president himself is becoming increasingly unpopular, he's having a tough time getting things through in Congress, it might be in an election year that you know the it slips away but i wouldn't count on it and if i was the russians i would reading this statement say to myself this is clearly what they intend to do and we need to get our legal team ready yeah and you can look at it from the other side of things where you know they may be saying okay this is this is our only chance to get this money Biden's not going to be reelected.

Every day he gets worse and worse. So it's either now or never. So we better get this money in the next six months or seven months. So they may be looking at it like that. And I want to ask you another question. We talked about Swift and how everything went down with Swift. Is there a possibility that the Biden White House can also look at seizing, look at stealing this money? in much the same way that they get weapons delivered to Ukraine.

In other words, a step-by-step approach where usually the Biden White House will say, okay, Germany, you send the tanks first, you give over your leopards and then we'll deliver the Abrams. Because Germany always puts a little bit of resistance. They say, no, no, we're not going to deliver tanks. That's a step too far. It's a step too far. Then the United States says, okay, look, we'll deliver Abrams tanks. But first, give over the leopards. So could the Biden White House tell the Europeans, okay, we understand your concerns, we understand that you want to push back against this?

But look, we'll definitely steal the $150 billion, whatever we have in the U.S. But you guys go first, but we're committed to following after you guys. I mean, maybe they take an increment like a step-by-step approach, but always the Europeans go first. That's always been the way things have gone with Ukraine. It's always the Europeans that are pushed first. And then the Americans either decide to follow or sometimes they don't. Sometimes they don't at all. Oh, absolutely.

They take that type of approach. They might very well do so. And it goes all the way back to 2014, June 2014, when the original sectoral sanctions were imposed, the Americans were really pushing hard. This is the Obama administration. But they got the Europeans to do it first and only afterwards to the United States. impose sanctions of the same sort. They always like, as you rightly say, to hide behind what the Europeans are doing.

They've run into more resistance this time. And the reason I think is because this is getting too close to the underlying financial credibility of the entire Eurozone. I suspect when we talk about the ECB being opposed to this, I suspect the Bundesbank in Germany, in Frankfurt, is also strongly opposed to this. And, you know, there is that. And it does have influence in Europe. But, you know, we have seen that every time the Europeans put up resistance,

eventually they fold. And because they fold it so often now, they find themselves in a situation where they have to be even more hardline than the Americans are, because if the Americans pull back, they're exposed. So, you know, there's that dynamic in play as well. And on top

of that, you're absolutely right, if they do sense that the situation is slipping out of their control, that may actually make them decide to accelerate and do this even faster before the window of in doing it

closes shut entirely. But one senses it's proving more difficult this time. And from a Biden administration point of view, especially in an election year, the absolute disaster, the complete catastrophe, is if they go ahead and do something like this, and then the Fed goes public and the ECB go public, and say that this is a very bad idea when we don't agree, and perhaps even start taking countermandering. to try to protect any drain on the EU financial system, for example, by raising interest rates. So, you know, it's not quite as straightforward as it looks, but the intention to do it is there, the will to do it is there.

They're very frustrated and angry that they haven't been able to do it up to know. now, but left of themselves, they will do it. Of that, I have no doubt. This has got to be eating away at Tim. I mean, this has got to be keeping them up at night to see this 300 billion just sitting there and you know they want to grab this money, but they can't. This has got to be so frustrating for them. Absolutely. And they're very angry about it too. I mean, you know, that's the other thing that comes through very much clearly from this statement. And by the way, an article that the British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, who is obviously

up to his ears of his now, wrote in the Times. They are clearly very, very angry that they haven't been able to do it often now. All right. We will leave it there. The durand.com. We are Rumballi's Odyssey, Bitschute, Telegram, Rock Finn, and TwitterX and go to the Duran shop. 15% of all T-shirts. Take care.