In August this year, while reporting to the US Congress on sanctions pressure on Moscow, US Deputy Treasury Secretary Sigal Mandelker said that Washington had blocked hundreds of millions of dollars in Russian assets. And a little earlier, in July, in pursuance of the decision of the Stockholm Arbitration Tribunal on the claim of Naftogaz, the Dutch assets of Gazprom for 2.6 billion dollars were arrested. One can also recall the arrests of Russian property in Belgium and France - this time in the Yukos case.
At first glance, these are events that have little to do with each other: the United States, Europe and Ukraine each separately put pressure on Russia for their own individual reasons. However, as noted in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation, all these are just stages of the campaign unfolded against our country. One gets the impression that Moscow's rivals are ready to act ruthlessly, and therefore the "sanctions tentacles" may reach out to other Russian property abroad. What else could be in danger?
What do we have
From a legal point of view, Russian property abroad can be divided into three types. These are immovable property assigned to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation; other real estate, as well as things not related to real estate. It is these types of property that have their own legal status in Russian legislation, and the issues of their management are regulated at the regulatory level.
Thus, diplomatic property is under the jurisdiction of the Russian Foreign Ministry. In theory, it should have immunity, but as the case of the Consulate General in San Francisco shows, even diplomatic status does not always help protect property.
Other immovable foreign property is managed by the Federal State Unitary Enterprise "Enterprise for Property Management Abroad", which is part of the Office of the President of Russia, and the Federal Property Management Agency. The latter department also disposes of movable property.
In practice, the category "real estate" includes land plots, buildings and structures, residential and non-residential premises, space objects, and aircraft and ships. The category "movable property" - shares, shares in the authorized capital of business entities and partnerships, cars, various technical systems, and so on.
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Perhaps, the international reserves of the Central Bank should be referred to the "movable assets" of Russia. After all, in fact, foreign bonds and other securities; gold stored in foreign credit institutions is all foreign property.
Russian Monaco
Speaking about Russian property, both in the country and abroad, it should be noted right away that information about it was in the public domain only until recently. The relevant information, according to a government decree, had to be entered into the Register of Federal Property. Of course, with the exception of data that is a state secret: for example, about the land and real estate of military bases and spaceports.
However, in November 2015, the practice changed. As RBC writes with reference to a representative of the Federal Property Management Agency, since that time information about foreign federal property has ceased to be posted on the Internet and provided to the media due to the "unfriendly policy of a number of countries." So now the data on foreign ownership of Russia is very limited.
In the open access - only information posted on the website of "State Property Management". The portal contains information about six overseas complexes - one each in Israel, Jordan, Italy, France, Palestine and South Africa. All these are cultural objects: the Sergievskoe Compound in Jerusalem, the Hospitable House on the site of the Epiphany in the Jordanian village of Gur Al-Kafrain, the Compound of the Russian Orthodox Church in Bari, St. Nicholas Cathedral in Nice, the Russian "Museum and Park Complex" in Jericho and the Temple St. Sergius of Radonezh in Johannesburg. In total, their area will more than exceed 100 thousand square meters: only the Sergievskoe Compound in Israel is 68 thousand square meters in area.
The picture of the rest of the holdings can be formed through the media. So, it is known that among other cultural sites of Russia abroad is a rock in Switzerland near the village of Andermatt. In addition, in 2016, the construction of the Holy Trinity Cathedral and the Russian Spiritual and Cultural Center in Paris was completed. For their construction, Moscow in 2010 bought out a plot of land with a total area of 4245 square meters.
In February 2015, Argumenty i Fakty wrote that the register of state property contained information about 3.27 square kilometers of property belonging to Russia. This is almost one and a half times more than the territory of the entire principality of Monaco. Among the ten largest estates, in addition to the already mentioned cultural sites, 345 thousand square meters in Scotland, more than 308 thousand square meters in the capital of Italy.
Large tracts of land belong to Russia in Turkey, the USA, Austria and, for example, in Nicaragua. According to the website "My Planet", our country has lands in at least 120 countries around the world.
gold reserve
The situation with "movable" assets is not at all simpler. Information about the accounts of the State Property Agency, which were arrested in the Yukos case, has not been disclosed. On the website of the Federal Property Management Agency there is very scanty data on the shares of enterprises located abroad owned by Russia. Among them, for example, information on the securities of the French subsidiary of VTB Bank, the Ukrainian-Russian-English-American joint venture Promzapal and the Thai company ASPAC Company Limited.
There you can also find information about the ownership of shares in companies such as Gazprom, Rosneftegaz and Alrosa. Each of these organizations has many assets abroad.
Finally, Central Bank statistics provide a more complete picture of Russia's international reserves. As of October 1, the figure was $ 459.2 billion. Almost 77 billion of this is monetary gold, 6.7 billion is special drawing rights, and three billion is a reserve position at the IMF. The remaining 370 billion is accounted for by “other foreign exchange assets”. Among them, for sure, there are US bonds.
At the same time, in recent months, Russia has been actively reducing its investments in American securities - to $ 48.7 billion, which was the lowest since 2008.
So Moscow wants to insulate itself from the risks associated with new sanctions from Washington. But, as it seems, if they want to, the Americans can look for other Russian assets as well. And, fortunately or unfortunately, there are many of them.
Ivan Roschepiy