Malta and Greece under EU scrutiny for inadequate Russian asset freeze

According to an EU official and an internal Union document cited by Reuters, Greece and Malta lag significantly behind other states in freezing Russian assets under European sanctions against Russia. after its invasion of Ukraine.

In particular, the 27 EU countries have so far reported freezing around €20.3 billion of sanctioned Russian assets, with Italy, Ireland, France, Spain, Germany, Belgium, Luxembourg and Austria having each notifying more than €1 billion in asset freezes.

Almost every other EU country has frozen assets worth millions, according to the EU executive European Commission document seen by Reuters.

Greece and Malta defended their work on sanctions. Greece confirmed it had notified the bloc of freezing assets worth €212,000. Malta said it had frozen assets worth €222,000, compared to €147,000 in the EU document.

“This is a bit strange,” said the EU official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. “Either they don’t have much, or they don’t do their job. Or they’ve done something, but they didn’t tell us about it, even though they had opportunities.”

“We have exhausted all assets”

A Greek authorities official said the €212,000 exhausted all assets identified by Athens on the EU sanctions list.

“Greece’s investment environment does not favor the inflow of Russian capital and offshore companies,” the official added.

A spokesman for Malta’s prime minister said Malta had helped other European countries seize assets such as yachts registered in Malta but also elsewhere.

“Malta has invested a lot of work in supporting common European efforts,” the spokesman said, adding that the reduction in Malta’s trade with Russia further shows Valletta’s commitment to implementing EU decisions.

After years of wrangling with the EU, Malta said last March it would stop selling passports to applicants from Russia and Belarus. The program granted beneficiaries full access to the EU in exchange for an investment of around €1 million.

Support for Ukraine

More than 10 months after Russia attacked Ukraine, the EU may have reached the limit of the harsh economic sanctions all 27 member states are willing to impose.

The current EU presidency, Sweden, said on Wednesday that any new sanctions against Russia could include more sub-lists.

EU attention is also turning this year to whether to use frozen Russian assets to help rebuild Ukraine, an exercise where some 300 billion euros worth of Russian central bank assets in Europe could also be at stake.

The circumvention of sanctions is a criminal offence

The Commission proposed last year to invest the assets and hand over the proceeds to Ukraine. That way, assets could be returned to their owners if sanctions are lifted.

There is little legal precedent and some member states have expressed concerns about the risk of lawsuits.

The EU is also working to make sanctions evasion a criminal offense in member states, and the EU official expected progress on those issues in time for the EU-Ukraine summit in Kyiv on February 3.