BRUSSELS (Sputnik) — France and Belgium froze Russian government assets, including bank accounts, as part of last year’s court ruling over the now-defunct Yukos oil firm earlier this week.
"We have unlocked all the bank accounts by ING [bank] in Brussels, and we hope that the same will happen to all the bank accounts in the next days, in the beginning of the week. It will be solution for all bank accounts of the Russian embassy, and [the missions] to the NATO and to the European Union," Reynders said in a video statement published by the Belgian Foreign Ministry.
In July 2014, a court in the Hague order Russia to pay $50 billion to former Yukos shareholders.
Russia considers the seizing of its assets abroad to be illegal, and has hired lawyers and legal experts to defend its case, First Deputy Prime Minister Igor Shuvalov said Friday.
