Work on unfreezing Russian investors' assets continues - Central Bank

MOSCOW. June 1 (Interfax) - The Central Bank of Russia and market participants continue to work on unfreezing the assets of Russian investors which were frozen overseas due to sanctions, CBR Deputy Governor Philipp Gabunia.

"We are making certain efforts, as are market participants, to help our citizens unfreeze their assets. But, unfortunately, this cannot be done publicly, as that would immediately become grounds for blocking on the other side," Gabunia said at a press conference on Monday.

He said that the CBR was taking measures against professional participants attempting to circumvent anti-sanctions regulations in terms of deals with non-residents. "Decisions have been taken for all of them. You can see them publicly: they have either had their licensed revoked or been given substantial fines, for participants for whom it is more a question of mistakenly violating the regime of decrees," Gabunia said.

He said that the arrest of Alexei Sedushkin, who is CEO of the Investment Chamber broker and has previously organized exchanges of frozen assets, should be addressed by "the other authorities".

"I have nothing to say on the case itself. It is probably necessary to contact the other authorities for comments," Gabunia said.

"As for some kind of systemic consequences [risks for frozen asset exchange schemes], we are not seeing them either," he said.

The arrests of both Sedushkin and head of Cypriot investment company Mind Money Julia Khandoshko were reported earlier. According to data from RBC, they are to become the suspects of fraud investigations.

In 2024, the government commission for monitoring foreign investments made Investment Chamber responsible for organizing the exchange of Russian investors' frozen foreign assets for funds of non-residents in "type C" accounts. Deals totaling 10.64 billion rubles were made over two rounds.