The US Department of Justice plans to step up its efforts to trace and confiscate assets linked to Russian Federation.
This was stated by Ukraine's Ambassador to the United States Oksana Markarova on Facebook.
Markarova noted that on 20 September, a report was published by E. Adams, director of the US Department of Justice's KleptoCapture group, as part of the hearings on "Increasing Pressure on Russia: Smart Sanctions, Economic Statesmanship and Next Steps ’ at the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs.
Among other things, the report states that the US Department of Justice has submitted a number of legislative proposals related to improving the freezing and seizure of Russian assets, including
- Enabling the transfer of proceeds from confiscated kleptocratic property to Ukraine to compensate for the damage caused by Russian aggression;
- reducing opportunities to circumvent the imposed sanctions and improving activities to counteract the circumvention of sanctions policy;
- extending the timeframe for conducting cases related to the identification of Russian assets;
- strengthening international cooperation in the search for and confiscation of kleptocratic assets;
- application of administrative and civil proceedings for the recovery of property to new types of assets.
On 2 March 2022, the KleptoCapture group was established under the auspices of the US Department of Justice, which included representatives of various US law enforcement agencies. The main goal of the group is to search for kleptocratic assets linked to Russia, identify facts of evasion of US sanctions and export controls, and prevent the circumvention of US sanctions policy.
Read all about the confiscation of Russian assets and the Ukrainian model in our research.