Russian Assets: Seizure Sir Iain Duncan Smith (Chingford and
Woodford Green) (Con) I beg to move, That this House calls on the
Government to lay before Parliament proposals for the seizure of
Russian state assets with the purpose of using such assets to
provide support for Ukraine, including the rectifying and
rebuilding of war damage brought about by the Russian invasion of
that country, and to facilitate the prosecution of war crimes and
atrocities; and...Request free trial
Russian Assets:
Seizure
(Chingford and Woodford
Green) (Con)
I beg to move,
That this House calls on the Government to lay before Parliament
proposals for the seizure of Russian state assets with the
purpose of using such assets to provide support for Ukraine,
including the rectifying and rebuilding of war damage brought
about by the Russian invasion of that country, and to facilitate
the prosecution of war crimes and atrocities; and further calls
on the Government to provide progress reports on this policy to
the House every six months.
(Harrow East) (Con)
rose—
Before my hon. Friend disappears from the Chamber, may I say that
this is a very timely debate? So much of it is connected to the
last debate, which I congratulate him on securing, because it
feeds into this one: it is all about what has happened to
people.
Just before Christmas, I was privileged to visit Ukraine along
with the hon. Member for Bradford South (). It was an eye-opening
trip and it was hugely relevant to today’s debate. It shed for me
a more personal light on the desperate nature of what was
happening to the Ukrainian people, which I was able to witness
for myself. We were fortunate enough to go there under the
auspices of Siobhan’s Trust, a charity based in Scotland and
founded by a man called David Fox-Pitt. That allowed us to be
close to the frontline, where the charity does its work. It feeds
some 4,000 people a day on hot pizza, which they would never get
normally and which bucks up their lives. However, most of them
live in shelters and in terrible conditions.
All around we saw the devastation inflicted on the villages. Many
mines had been scattered, leaving us unable to get off the paths,
and in the villages lay dead bodies which, even by then, had not
been collected because of the mines. These were people who had
brought no harm to anyone—and, by the way, many of them were
Russian speakers, which goes to show exactly how ghastly
President Putin and his Administration really are. They have
caused all these difficulties through the murderous nature of
this terrible war brought on the heads of ordinary, normal
Ukrainians; that is the state we are in.
Seeing all that devastation made me all the more certain that we
must press on and do more to bring these criminals to justice,
and make full reparation for the damage and destruction and loss
of life that they have caused. I congratulate my own Government
and, indeed, the whole House on coming together to do huge things
in Ukraine with their support through arms and weapons and
training, and I congratulate ordinary individuals outside the
House on their generous contributions of money. The fact that we
are united demonstrates a very strong sense of purpose to the
rest of the world. However, there is more that we must do; we
cannot sit back and say that we have done our bit. This is a
progressive war and we will be tugged along with it, so it is
time that we thought of getting ahead of some of these
problems.
I believe that we are being visited today by three Ukrainian MPs:
Mr Dmytro Natalukha, whom I met in Kyiv, Ms Maria Mezentseva, and
Ms Olena Khomenko. I think they are somewhere in the Public
Gallery, although I have not managed to see them yet.
(Barking) (Lab)
I join the right hon. Gentleman in welcoming the Ukrainian MPs
who are with us today. A letter has been sent by 45 Ukrainian MPs
to our Prime Minister urging him to do precisely what we want,
which is not to freeze assets but to seize them. Given that
support from the Ukrainian Parliament, does he not agree that
there is now an urgent need for the Government to be bold and to
act?
I do agree with the right hon. Lady. We have a lot of Russian
assets that are currently frozen, while Ukraine is screaming out
for money and support to help all those devastated areas. We can
bring the two together, and that is what today’s debate is all
about.
(Mitcham and Morden)
(Lab)
I am sure the right hon. Member is also aware of allegations that
a number of the people sanctioned have moved their money around
into trusts to give to their children in order to avoid having
their assets taken. Does he agree that the Economic Crime and
Corporate Transparency Bill should be strengthened to require
sanctioned individuals to disclose assets that were owned six
months prior to their designation? That would prevent oligarchs
such as Roman Abramovich from moving assets around and evading
the sanctions.
I entirely agree. I was going to raise that point at the end of
my speech, but never mind: this is a shared debate.
I fully back that proposal, which is one of the recommendations
that we have to make so that the Government can jump ahead of
this. Too often we have been slow and, in the six months that
have elapsed, in some of those cases, people have shifted their
money around into all sorts of areas. One particular individual—I
was going to name him, but I will not do so now—has managed to
buy flats through a Cyprus company. His name is not registered,
but they own it and the money is lodged there. This sort of stuff
is going on and we need to shut it down.
(Chelmsford) (Con)
I thank my right hon. Friend for raising such an important issue.
Of course, the largest amount of Russian frozen assets are those
of the Central Bank of the Russian Federation. Yesterday, the
Chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee, my hon. Friend the Member
for Rutland and Melton (), said that, if we do not
have the right law in place to use those frozen Central Bank
assets to pay for Ukraine’s reconstruction, we should change the
law and test it in the courts. I agree with her; does my right
hon. Friend?
My right hon. Friend is jumping ahead of me, so I will allow that
point to stand for a minute.
I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Rhondda (Sir ), whose ten-minute rule Bill
was on exactly this subject. There was a lot of logic and sense
in that Bill, and we should use it as a baseline for quite a lot
of the stuff that needs to happen. As he pointed out when he made
his speech on the Bill, in the last year, the United Nations High
Commissioner for Human Rights recorded 18,358 civilian
casualties. He went on to say that 7,031 people had been killed,
that 11,327 had been injured, including 177 girls and 221 young
boys, that some 12 million people had left Ukraine and 7 million
had been displaced internally. When I was there, I saw many
people who had had to move to Lviv internally because their homes
were no longer habitable, and they were living in terrible
conditions.
Will my right hon. Friend give way?
I want to make a bit of progress, just in case my right hon.
Friend is about to tell me what I have got here in my speech.
Forgive me if I just get ahead of it, because everyone else will
probably do the same.
Let us have look at the costs of the war, which are really what
this is all about. Ukraine’s death toll is 60,000 and it is
rising every day. The cost of reconstruction is now estimated to
be between $750 billion and $1 trillion and rising, and these
might be conservative estimates because the damage is still not
fully accounted for. Since the beginning of the invasion, the UK
has provided £2.3 billion in military assistance and another £220
million in humanitarian aid. The UK has frozen billions of pounds
in Russian assets under sanctions following the invasion of
Ukraine. The Office of Financial Sanctions Implementation has
reported that £18 billion of assets owned by individuals and
entities associated with the regime have been frozen since the
beginning of the war, but some estimates suggest that more than
£40 billion could yet be frozen and this is the point we want to
get to.
(Cardiff North) (Lab)
I, too, have just got back from Ukraine. I was there a couple of
weeks ago and saw the immense devastation across the country,
specifically in those areas that were Russian held. Importantly,
this Government looked at plans to repurpose assets last July but
they still have not done it. Does the right hon. Gentleman agree
that it is now imperative for the Government to look at
repurposing those state assets in order to start rebuilding and
restructuring the country and offering that important aid?
I absolutely agree with the hon. Lady.
I want to talk about what Russian state assets are frozen and
what could be frozen. It is important to note that, in Congress
right now, they are already discussing this—I spoke to someone
there just 24 hours ago—and in Canada, they are seriously talking
about it. European Parliaments are also discussing the matter.
This is a moment for us to give a lead on this and help to shape
the nature of it, as we have a conference coming up shortly and I
wonder whether that might be the place to lead on this
matter.
According to the Bank of Russia’s own 2021 annual report, £26
billion of Russian state reserves are in the United Kingdom and,
on a wider level, western Governments have now frozen some $350
billion of Russian central bank reserves in response to the
invasion. There is yet more that they could do. The combined
value of frozen UK properties belonging to Russian oligarchs is
at least £2 billion. Funds frozen under the UK sanctions regime
are passive, and that is the problem. Those funds would enable us
to finance the rebuilding of Ukraine and to show Russian dirty
money the door. This is the key: we send the message and we help
with reparations. Several countries, including Canada, as I said
earlier, and the EU are already on to this process and I urge our
Government to help to give a lead on this.
May I draw the right hon. Gentleman’s attention to the fact that
the Canadians have gone even further? My understanding is that
they have already started taking action by pursuing the
forfeiture of US$26 million from Roman Abramovich’s holding in
Granite Capital Holdings Ltd. If Canada can do it, surely we can,
too.
I agree with the right hon. Lady. If countries do this
individually, it will allow terrible regimes to dodge their money
around from one financial centre to another, as some will not
have done it. This has to be done in one go by all the developed
world’s major centres, otherwise it will end up with disputes and
problems. I applaud Canada for starting, but we need the City of
London, New York, Zurich and all the other major centres to be
serious about making sure this cannot happen and these assets
will always be seized.
I can tell the Minister of State, Foreign, Commonwealth and
Development Office, my right hon. Friend the Member for
Berwick-upon-Tweed (), that we understand
the underlying problem, but my point is that the issues are not
insuperable.
My right hon. Friend is making an excellent point, but I draw his
attention to another source of funds. There are increasing
stories that the Wagner Group may be using gold stolen from
Sudan’s gold mines to fund part of its atrocious activities in
Ukraine. The Wagner Group is obviously guilty of atrocities not
only in Sudan but elsewhere in the Sahel and Africa. There are
stories today that the Italian Defence Minister is directly
linking the Wagner Group to the increase of small boat migrants
in Europe. Does my right hon. Friend agree that, as well as
taking action on Russian assets, we should urgently proscribe the
Wagner Group as a terrorist organisation?
Yes, of course. It is a disgusting organisation led by a
disgusting individual carrying out disgusting atrocities in
Russia. It is also using slave labour in some of these mines. Of
course the Wagner Group must be proscribed, as should the Islamic
Revolutionary Guard Corps and other such organisations. We should
be at the forefront of this, not lagging behind.
The Government’s general belief is that seizing these central
bank reserves would violate Russia’s sovereign immunity and would
therefore be a breach of international law. If we think about it,
Putin has redefined international crime and is now hiding behind
international law. It is time for us to come together to make the
modifications. That is the key.
(Isle of Wight) (Con)
I thank my right hon. Friend for securing this important debate.
Does he agree that there may be something to learn from the Iraq
war? Iraqi assets under Saddam Hussein’s rule were used— there
was a formal legal process under which people could apply for
those assets to rebuild infrastructure that had been damaged in
Kuwait and elsewhere. I wonder whether the Government, when they
answer the debate today, would say whether they are considering a
similar process—a formal legal process under which Russian assets
could be used to finance construction work in Ukraine.
I would happily welcome that. It is a very good idea.
Ultimately, the war Putin initiated on Ukraine must now be
punished in a variety of ways. It is unwarranted aggression
against another country, and it therefore changes how
international law should be applied. We should readjust and
redefine international law to the new reality that Putin’s
invasion has brought about. The old order is now broken, and we
need to redefine it to make sure that the lesson for any other
oligarch, future leader or demagogue is that they can never again
hide behind these rules.
Although international law is always evolving, we need to
recognise the exceptional nature of Russia’s aggression and
conduct in Ukraine, as that is critical to what we do next.
Russia’s aggression and invasion are breaches of the most
fundamental principles of international law and order. Russia is
aware of this breach but has not stopped its conduct, and it
continues to threaten international security and peace. That
unprecedented conduct creates a need for all Governments in the
west to amend their laws together to deter other states. These
amendments should use specific and limited criteria to preserve
sovereign immunity in all cases. It is possible to do both
without hiding behind the idea that sovereign immunity is an
absolute that cannot be breached. Putin has breached it, and in
future that should be the rule.
The Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Bill could and
should be strengthened to enable the seizure of undisclosed
assets—that is the key. We already have a vehicle. It is wholly
possible to make that difference, and to make it quite quickly. I
say to my right hon. Friend the Minister that I hope she will
give that serious consideration, as it is really important.
As we know, sanctions evasion is already an offence. Embedding a
new “disclosure or lose it” principle would go a long way to
ensuring that sanctioned oligarchs are no longer able to conceal
their dirty money here with impunity. That would help us to clean
up what became a bad reputation for the City of London, whereby
much of that ill-gotten money was hiding here, in one of the
leading nations of the free world, and we did little or nothing
to stop that.
Sir (Rhondda) (Lab)
I get a bit frustrated when I keep hearing the Government talking
about how many people we are sanctioning. There is no point in
sanctioning people unless we enforce those sanctions. I find it
difficult to comprehend that so far we have fined only two firms
in this country. I am sure that there are many more sanctions
busters in the UK than have thus far been revealed. It is
important that that is not allowed to proceed with impunity, is
it not?
Of course, I completely agree with the hon. Gentleman on that.
Interestingly, if we manage to criminalise the failure to
disclose sanctioned assets, we are halfway there on his point,
because they cannot then escape. If we prove that sanctions
evasion is taking place, this can be the basis for asset recovery
in due course; we would then have a reason why we should be doing
this, not just because of the criminal purpose, but for the fact
that we would actually be able to gain funds.
(Birmingham, Hodge Hill)
(Lab)
The right hon. Gentleman is making an excellent speech. Is he as
worried as I am about this new trick that the Treasury is
performing called “general licences”? There are now whole
categories of spending where the Treasury is basically issuing
carte blanche to oligarchs to spend what they like and, worse, it
is refusing to reveal that framework to us here in this
House.
I agree with the right hon. Gentleman; this is beginning to sound
like one of those “golden visas”. It was golden in description,
but dirty and leaden in reality, and I think this is where we are
again. We are going to find us all in agreement—
Is the problem we have not shown, for example, in Abramovich’s
allegedly shifting about £7 billion of assets out of the country
the day before? What he did was perfectly legal, because I
believe this was shifted to the United Arab Emirates or somewhere
else in the middle east and his lawyers knew about it. In the
United States, there is now talk about going after the law firms
and the accountancy firms that help the oligarchs and that have
helped these individuals to move their money around just before
they have been sanctioned or to find ways around sanctions. Does
my right hon. Friend agree that one way here is to go after these
middlemen and women? We have not done that, but the problem is
that what these people are doing is not necessarily illegal —they
are shifting the money before it can be sanctioned, and money is
a movable asset, unlike a house in Belgrave Square.
I agree. These individuals, Abramovich and others, may want this
to be done, but somebody has to do it for them, and my hon.
Friend is absolutely right to follow the chain down, because we
have to capture all the individuals down the chain, not just the
one at the top. That is the key, because without those, this does
not happen. He rightly says that, to avoid the sanctions, three
weeks before the war began Abramovich was busy restructuring
radically his assets. I believe that my hon. Friend is right to
say that between £4 billion and £7 billion was squirreled away as
a result, and we were not able to do anything about it. But we
should have been ahead of the game on that one.
The right hon. Gentleman is making an excellent contribution. I
want to say one thing: I do not think the Government are using
their current powers as effectively as they could on this issue.
Under section 11 of the Sanctions and Anti-Money Laundering Act
2018, the powers can be used against somebody “associated with”
the person sanctioned. If that is the case and I have read the
legislation right, does he agree that the Government could have
stopped Abramovich giving all this to his young children and
could have sanctioned them because they were associated with
Abramovich himself?
I am beginning to feel that I am making a collective speech,
because the right hon. Lady’s point is down here in my notes. It
is better made by her than me, but I fully agree with her as a
result.
We could have got ahead of this—that is the point, as the example
of Abramovich shows. Many others have drifted off, so the right
hon. Lady is absolutely right: we needed to be quicker and more
determined. Now, we have to sustain our determination to flush
all this out while we have the opportunity. I always sense a
little resistance. When we call it out, the Government say, “Ooh,
we don’t know. We’ve got lots on our plate and we are doing lots
of things,” but this is the time to act.
The right hon. Gentleman was kind enough to participate in my
Adjournment debate in Westminster Hall the other day. This is not
just about oligarchs; it is about companies that are sanctions
busting. I am aware of a Belarusian company that imports goods
through Russia in order to undermine and take customers from a
business in my constituency. Does he agree that, whether it is an
oligarch or a business, the Office of Financial Sanctions
Implementation and the Foreign Office should be adaptable and
able to react to rogue actors, who will do everything possible to
avoid the sanctions regime?
I must say, the hon. Lady’s debate was fascinating. She
demonstrated that by our failure to follow this course, a UK
company is essentially sanctioned because it is unable to get
payment. The measures bounce back at us and honest, decent
companies find themselves trapped by the failure to square the
circle of the process and get everyone all along the chain. It
was a brilliant debate, and I congratulate her on raising the
subject on behalf of her constituents.
The Government should introduce new legislation to allow the
seizure of already-frozen assets that are linked to criminality.
The Russian Government have a huge amount of money of course, but
many oligarchs are guilty of benefiting financially from war
crimes and atrocities in Ukraine, so we should activate new
legislation. Under such a mechanism, an enforcement authority
such as the National Crime Agency could bring proceedings in a UK
court to have property belonging to a sanctioned person involved
in a gross violation of international human rights law or
international humanitarian law confiscated without compensation,
so that the frozen property can be used to fund reparations. That
is the key.
(Leeds North West)
(Lab/Co-op)
That is a really important point. As co-chair of the all-party
parliamentary group on Ukraine, I know that Ukrainian
parliamentarians, including those from the Rada who are in the
Gallery, are desperate to repair and reconstruct their country.
The air raid early warning system in Ukraine is broken—only 12%
of the country is covered. They need reparations to be able to
wage war and to reconstruct their country.
The hon. Gentleman is right, and I obviously completely
agree.
If we did this, we could have tougher sanctions. A recent example
involved Eugene Tenenbaum, a close associate of Roman
Abramovich—I am told that “Abram-oh-vich” is the correct
pronunciation—and former Chelsea football club director, who was
given permission by the Treasury to sell his Surrey mansion for
£16 million a month after the Government designated him for UK
sanctions and froze all his assets. How did that happen? Why did
that happen? Who is not talking to someone else to tell them what
they are doing? We are letting stuff slip through because we are
not being serious about implementing measures properly.
I could give plenty of other examples. Yevgeny Prigozhin, the
boss of the Wagner Group, is deeply involved in another current
row about aircraft leased by western companies to Russia that
were seized after sanctions were imposed. The Russians are
refusing to pay reparations or hand the aircraft back. Huge
amounts of money are available to these people. I have a list,
but will not go through all the names, because I realise that
many others want to speak.
Putin’s brutal invasion has now entered its second year. The
Government must amplify their efforts. They have done a great
deal, and I congratulate them on much of it, but much more is
needed. The Government need to get right down into this issue and
make sure that we have a plan for reparation and rebuilding of
Ukraine. Let us start with the dirty money—that is the key. We
may yet have to give more money, and so may America, but let us
start where the bill lands first: with those who are responsible
for this brutal invasion of Ukraine. The Ukrainians are a
peaceful and decent people whose lives have been turned upside
down. Families have been destroyed or have had to flee, and many
young men and women are now having to go to the frontline for the
first time as soldiers and put their lives on the line, standing
for the freedom of their country. We must seize those assets
wherever appropriate and ensure that Russia is held to account.
As I said earlier, there is much to say “Well done” to the
Government for, but there is also much more that needs to be
done.
I will leave hon. Members with this simple thought: as we come
together across the House, let us also try to work out how we can
bring all the other western Governments together in this action.
To do it by ourselves will, I recognise, be a slight problem, but
if we could get the US Congress, the Canadian Parliament and the
European Union to engage on this, then we would have something
that would frighten the Russians completely and give us the tools
to finish this particular job.
Mr Deputy Speaker ( )
As hon. Members have recognised, we are honoured to have been
joined by colleagues from the Ukrainian Rada who are in the
Gallery this afternoon. We welcome you; we salute you and the
courage of your country in your fight for democracy.
I must just gently say to hon. Members that the winding-up
speeches will start at 6.30 pm.
5.41pm
(Birmingham, Hodge Hill)
(Lab)
I welcome the speech by the right hon. Member for Chingford and
Woodford Green ( ), which I thought was
excellent. I will supply three further thoughts and set the
context for the scale of the task of Ukrainian reconstruction. I
am glad the Government have offered to host the June conference
for reconstruction finance, following on from a member of
conferences in Lugano.
It is worth setting out for the House the sheer scale of the
finance we need to mobilise, which is why the right hon.
Gentleman is correct to say that we must start by seizing Russian
assets now. Frankly, we will need to provide an enormous amount
of money to our Ukrainian colleagues. Ukrainian GDP has been hit
by about 45%; the World Bank thinks its budget deficit this year
will be something like $38 billion. As many who have been there
know, Ukraine has very high inflation and therefore very high
interest rates; perhaps one third of businesses have stopped
operations, 14 million people have left their homes, 6 million
have gone abroad, there has been huge educational disruption for
the next generation of Ukrainians and about half the energy
infrastructure has been knocked out.
This has been a moment where the Bretton Woods institutions have
really stepped up. Between the International Monetary Fund and
the World Bank, something like $27 billion has been supplied this
year. Those Bretton Woods institutions offer us one of the most
efficient and effective routes for providing what could be, on
current estimates, a $750 billion bill to rebuild the great
country of Ukraine. As chair of the parliamentary network on the
World Bank and International Monetary Fund, I am delighted that
we have just launched the Ukraine chapter of the network. I am
also delighted that at our global parliamentary forum, at the
beginning of the spring meetings in Washington in April, we will
have a special session focused on reconstruction finance for
Ukraine.
However, $750 billion is a big number. Capitalising those kinds
of loans could take $150 billion-worth of equity. That is why
seizing, let us say, $300 billion of Russian bank reserves frozen
abroad will be incredibly important in helping to supply that
money.
With the reconstruction conference taking place in London on 21
and 22 June, does my right hon. Friend not think it is important
for us to involve the IMF and World Bank in that conference and
ensure that we have a rounded package for Ukraine, rather than
working in silos or isolation?
It is crucial that we do that, and the spring meetings in
Washington should provide a springboard, but the most efficient
way of surging the necessary money into Ukraine is through the
Bretton Woods institutions that we set up in 1944 to finance
post-war reconstruction. We did it before—let us try it
again.
My second point, having set the stage and set out some of the
numbers, follows on from the right hon. Member for Chingford and
Woodford Green. We now have to identify the legal strategy for
turning this idea into a reality. All of us in this House are
frustrated that the Government—and, indeed, Governments around
the world—are, we feel, dragging their feet when it comes to
putting in place the necessary laws to move from freezing to
seizing. There are probably three components that we need to
shift into place: there needs to be action at the United Nations;
there needs to be action to set up the tribunal to prosecute
Russia for the crime of aggression; and then we need to implement
the ten-minute rule Bill of my hon. Friend the Member for Rhondda
(Sir ), which would create the legal
framework for action.
rose—
I will say a word about each of those things after I have given
way to the hon. Gentleman.
Does the right hon. Gentleman have a preferred option? Although
it will be legally possible to seize Russian state assets—that
has arguably been done before, so there is precedent—is he
concerned about the seizure of private assets? I am tempted to
say that those are legal. They are seized assets from a dirty
period of Russian history, so I think one could say that they are
not illegal, but how legal they are is another matter. If we are
seizing oligarchs’ assets, how can we do so legally without
setting a more tricky precedent?
I will come to that now. There are three things that we will need
to do. It is not just about private wealth; it is about public
wealth—the assets of the Russian central bank. We know that $300
billion was held abroad. We know where about $30 billion of it
is, and that money has been frozen. To seize that money, we will
need to do a couple of things.
First, we will need to bring the world together at the United
Nations to pass a resolution that revokes the doctrine of
immunity for central banks when there has been a clear violation
of the United Nations charter. I am under no illusions; we will
not get 100%, but by getting a significant number of nations to
sign up to that resolution, we begin to change the parameters of
international law. That means that domestic law, when we move it,
will be in a much safer legal space. Indeed, many international
lawyers would say that seizing those assets is a legitimate
countermeasure, but if there is a UN resolution, we have begun to
change the concept of what is protected by immunity—such as
central bank assets—and what is not.
Secondly, we then have to ensure that we do not fall foul of the
European convention on human rights, particularly the first
protocol, which enshrines the right to the enjoyment of assets.
We have to ensure that there is no way that the Russian
Government can be considered a victim. The safest way we can do
that is to move quickly, as President Zelensky has proposed, to
begin prosecuting Russia for the crime of aggression. If we have
a UN resolution that has begun to revoke the concept of immunity
in the case of aggression, and a tribunal that is prosecuting
Russia for the crime of aggression, we will have begun to change
fundamentally the context of international law.
I know that the right hon. Gentleman is about the most expert
person here when it comes to the workings of the international
financial institutions and so on. Does he expect or think that we
will be able to seize oligarch assets as part of that process? If
so, do we have any idea how we will proceed down that route, or
are we looking only at Russian state assets? At some point, all
the oligarchs close to Putin will get their billions back.
I think that we can use the same tactics to seize private and
public assets, but I am conscious that we have to change the
context and parameters of international law first. That is how we
maximise the safety of domestic legislation, which has to be the
third step. We in this House are lucky that my hon. Friend the
Member for Rhondda has set out precisely how to do that in his
ten-minute rule Bill.
Crucially, we need to ensure that the State Immunity Act 1978,
which gives immunity to central banks, is revoked or at least
conditioned in a way that allow laws to be presented here so that
we in Parliament can order the seizure, forfeiture and
repurposing of assets.
My final point is a little more short term, meaning now. If we
are to maximise the assets that we seize and repurpose for the
reconstruction of Ukraine, we have to get serious about sanctions
enforcement. Right now, frankly, we are not. There will be a lot
more money available if we stop the nonsense that is going on in
the dark at the moment. The truth is that sanctions enforcement
in this country today is the proverbial riddle wrapped in a
mystery inside an enigma.
As the right hon. Member for Chingford and Woodford Green said,
we have been told that as of October 2022, £18.4 billion-worth of
Russian assets have been frozen in this country. We then learned
from the scandal exposed by openDemocracy that the Treasury has
been issuing licences like confetti, even to warlords such as
Prigozhin, the head of the Wagner Group—in his case, to fly
English lawyers to St Petersburg to prosecute an English
journalist in an English court in order to silence him because he
was writing the stories that triggered the sanctions against
Prigozhin in the first place. What a nonsense!
As I began to dig into this, much worse was revealed. In the last
Office of Financial Sanctions Implementation report, it was
revealed that the Treasury is no longer issuing licences to
individuals one by one to authorise specific expenditure; it is
now issuing general licences that authorise an entire category of
spending. In fact, 33 general licences were issued last year, so
I naturally asked what the value of those general licences
totalled. I was told on 15 February in a parliamentary
answer:
“The Office of Financial Sanctions Implementation (OFSI) does not
disclose data from specific licences it has granted under UK
sanctions regimes.”
When the Exchequer Secretary to the Treasury came to the House on
25 January, we asked him whether, if he cannot tell us what the
total value of the licences is, he could at least tell us what
the licences were issued for. He said he could not tell us that
because
“there is a delegated framework”
and that these decisions
“are routinely taken by senior civil servants.”—[Official Report,
25 January 2023; Vol. 726, c. 1014.]
I then asked what this delegated framework was and whether we in
this House might have a look at it. I first tried a parliamentary
question. The answer came back on 8 February:
“There are currently no plans to publish the delegation
framework.”
I then had to try a freedom of information request, and I have it
here in my hand. It came back to me on 9 March, and it says:
“we can confirm that HM Treasury does hold information within the
scope of your request.
The information we have identified…we believe may engage the
exemption provided for by section 35(1)(a)—formulation or
development of Government policy.”
We now have a situation where Ministers are saying that it is the
civil servants’ job, and the civil servants are saying that it is
advice to Ministers. For that reason, we cannot get to what this
delegated framework looks like.
I then asked whether they could at least tell us how many people
we have busted for sanctions evasion. The Office of Financial
Sanctions Implementation confessed that there were 147 reports of
a breach last year, but when I asked the Minister for Security
how many criminal investigations had resulted from that, he said
that he could not answer
“For reasons of operational security”.
I went back to the Office of Financial Sanctions Implementation
report to double-check, and of 147 reports of a breach, there
have been a grand total of two monetary fines, both to fintech
companies.
So there we have it: £18 billion frozen and licences issued like
confetti in a secret regime that Ministers say is down to civil
servants and civil servants say is actually advice to Ministers.
Despite this flagrant abuse—and we know the scale of it, because
the Financial Times told us that $250 million has been laundered
by the Wagner Group—we have just two fines that total £86,000.
Well, £86,000 in fines is not going to do much to help us rebuild
Ukraine. I ask the Minister on the Front Bench to explain to us
how she is going to do an awful lot better than that.
Sanctions enforcement in this country stinks to high heaven, and
what concerns me most is the culture of secrecy around it. Many
of us in this House have been around long enough to know that
such a culture is never a recipe for good public policy. We in
this House have to be realistic about the scale of finance that
is needed; maximise the use of our Bretton Woods institutions;
and move internationally and domestically, together with our
allies, to change the parameters of international law and
maximise the safety and security of domestic legislation that we
pass here. But let us move now to send a clear signal from the
UK—the home of the rule of law—that this is not going to be a
safe haven for sanctions evasion. We are going to send that clear
message by getting tough, and getting tough now.
Mr Deputy Speaker ( )
If we are going to get everybody in, we are going to have to have
a self-denying ordinance of about six minutes.
5.55pm
Sir (Maldon) (Con)
I start by congratulating my right hon. Friend the Member for
Chingford and Woodford Green ( ), who raises very
important issues. The truth is that we probably will not be able
to implement what we are discussing until the Russian invasion is
defeated, but it is absolutely right that we start to plan now
for when—I hope and pray—that happens. It is also a pleasure to
follow the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Hodge Hill (), who raises matters that are of
great concern right across the House. He does a service by doing
so.
In December 2018, I visited the city of Mariupol. At that time,
it was under blockade from the sea due to Russian enforcement
preventing sea traffic arriving into the Sea of Azov.
Nevertheless, it was a thriving port city. It is estimated that
90% of that city was either damaged or razed to the ground in the
course of the sustained bombardment by Russian forces. Across
Ukraine, an estimated 144,000 houses have been destroyed, and
that number is increasing every day that we speak.
As has been pointed out, the estimated cost of reconstruction in
Ukraine last year was around $750 billion. That figure is
probably going to reach $1 trillion, and possibly rise even
further. That is for reconstruction; on top of that, we have the
question of compensation for those who have lost loved ones, the
loss of economic infrastructure and jobs, and the damage to
education and health. Those are huge sums, and it is only right
that those responsible—the Russian state—should be made to
pay.
Work has been done on this question, and I pay tribute to the New
Lines Institute for Strategy and Policy and, in particular, Dr
Azeem Ibrahim, who in conjunction with other international
experts has been developing a plan for how we should go about
seeking reparations from the Russian state. There are some legal
precedents. Two have been identified, the first being the 1946
Paris agreement on reparation, which provided for the seizure of
German public and private property in the aftermath of the second
world war. As my hon. Friend the Member for Isle of Wight () mentioned, a more recent
precedent was the establishment of the Kuwait compensation fund
under the UN compensation commission, which used the proceeds of
the Iraqi oil industry to pay out compensation totalling
something like $52 billion to 1.5 million claimants.
That was established with the agreement of the UN Security
Council, and unless there is a change to the composition of the
Security Council, it seems unlikely that it is going to agree in
this case. However, we need to fashion international multilateral
agreements, and as has already been demonstrated, there is a
substantial majority in the United Nations General Assembly that
would support not only condemnation of Russia for its aggression,
but the payment of compensation in due course.
Legal processes are under way. The International Criminal Court
is investigating war crimes and the individuals responsible, but
as we know, the ICC is prevented from bringing prosecutions in
absentia, and Heads of State enjoy immunity. We need a mechanism
that will hold to account those ultimately responsible for this
aggression: the Heads of the Government of the Russian
Federation. For that reason, I am pleased that the UK Government
are now working with others on the establishment of a special
tribunal to bring a prosecution for the crime of aggression, and
I join others in paying tribute to our friends, in particular
Maria Mezentseva of the Rada, who have been touring around to
persuade different supportive countries of the case for bringing
a prosecution.
As has been pointed out, the funds available for the payment of
reparation in the first instance belong to the Russian state; the
estimated frozen funds of the Russian central bank total
something like $300 billion. On top of that, the Russian state
enjoys oil revenues, and it is possible to consider whether some
kind of levy could be placed on that. There are then the assets
of institutions associated with the Russian state, such
as Gazprom Rosneft and
Rosatom, but things will need to go beyond that, and the debate
so far has rightly focused on whether we can address those assets
held by private individuals and oligarchs.
The right hon. Gentleman is just coming on to the point I was
going to make. There is some contention about assets held by
private individuals and about their getting caught up in a very
long legal process, but that is not the case with state assets
and the assets of state-owned companies that he has just talked
about, which we can address now. He talked earlier about
reconstruction, but we do not need to wait until the war is
finished. Many liberated areas need reconstruction now, and many
other projects need to be financed. That work needs to happen
now, not after the war has finished.
Sir
I completely agree with the hon. Gentleman. I think the legal
process for seizing the assets of Russian state institutions will
be complicated, but it is certainly more feasible than addressing
those of private individuals. That is not to say that we do not
need to move to do so, but it will be legally much more
complex.
Many of the oligarchs hold immense wealth and assets in western
countries, and they do so at the behest of the Russian
Government. No oligarch is able to hold enormous sums of wealth
and maintain their position in Russia, unless it is with the
agreement of the Russian Government. A number of them are known
as wallets, which means they are simply taking care of the wealth
of Mr Putin and others at the senior levels of the Russian
Government. It is right that we should address that, but we have
to accept that this country has a proud history of respect for
property rights and the rule of law, and we have also seen the
extent to which lawyers will pursue cases on behalf of those
individuals. The right hon. Member for Birmingham, Hodge Hill
() mentioned strategic lawsuits
against public participation, and we have already seen examples
of that.
I do not in any way underestimate the complexity. This will be an
unprecedented legal measure, but it is necessary because, as has
already been said, the devastation wreaked in Ukraine has to be
put right, and it is only proper that that should be done by
those responsible, who are the Russian Government. I agree with
my right hon. Friend the Member for Chingford and Woodford Green
that that will need international agreement. It cannot be done by
us alone, but it is right that we start to look now at seeking
that multilateral agreement among all the countries where these
assets are held and to prepare for the day when we can start to
make Russia pay for what it has done.
6.03pm
(St Helens South and Whiston)
(Lab)
Billions of sanctioned Russian assets lie dormant. There is at
least £26 billion of Russian bank reserves frozen in the UK. It
is blood money that Putin has secured on the backs of the bodies
of his own people, the people of Grozny and the people of
Ukraine. For years, Putin was preparing for sanctions. He
expected what we, along with our allies, have done, but there are
many countries facilitating the evasion of sanctions.
Putin has been given ample time to back down—over a year, in
fact—and he has chosen not to do so. This may not be a state of
total war for Russia, but it is for Ukraine and its people. In
reality, we must accept the truth that Putin will not back down,
because doing so would be the end of his rule in Moscow. Simply,
Ukraine must win, which is why this debate is important.
The Government have billions of pounds-worth of Russian assets at
their disposal, which could be used to support Ukraine now. It is
pointless to keep them frozen and perhaps use them to help to
rebuild Ukraine in a few months or years, or perhaps even longer,
if Ukraine no longer exists. The priority must be to help Ukraine
now, not in a hypothetical future. There are reports that China
is considering backing Russia with lethal aid, which would
further prolong the conflict and make it even more difficult for
the brave Ukrainians.
Since the start of the invasion, the UK has provided more than £2
billion in military assistance, which has made a huge difference,
particularly at the beginning of the war. If £26 billion of
Russian assets were repurposed for military and humanitarian
assistance, that would make an even greater difference. The next
set of assets are the private, undisclosed ones; it is likely
that Russian oligarchs own billions of pounds-worth of hidden and
undeclared assets here in the UK.
The Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Bill, if amended
correctly, will help authorities to track down those assets. A
policy of “disclose it or lose it” would make oligarchs think
again about using our country to hide their dirty money. For that
to work, however, the Bill needs to be strengthened, because it
is too easy for oligarchs to evade sanctions. Many had weeks to
prepare and hide their assets, and authorities were already on
the back foot due to the years, or even decades, that oligarchs
had had to do as they please.
The Bill is long overdue and I urge the Government to seize the
opportunity to get it right. It is not acceptable to leave
loopholes in sanctions that have already been used to sue British
journalists. The United States Congress has granted the
Department of Justice the ability to transfer certain seized
assets to Ukraine, and it successfully did so last month. Our
Government need to do the same.
We all want and need to see Ukraine win this war, because it is
fighting for our shared values. Freedom and democracy must win,
and it is our duty to do our lot to help. That is why I support
the motion before the House today. Let us seize Russian assets
here to help Ukraine win.
After hearing the contribution of my right hon. Friend the Member
for Birmingham, Hodge Hill (), I simply say that it is about
time that the Government got their act together. In local
government, when powers are delegated, the framework is also
delegated and people are held to account. If what is needed is
not being delivered, the Government need to change something so
that it is delivered. Are we in control? Who is running this
country? We are certainly not doing our bit on this issue. We
want to, but we are not achieving it, so the Government must get
their act together—and soon.
6.08pm
(Huntingdon) (Con)
This war must see Ukraine and its people emerge victorious—there
are no plausible alternatives—but there is still a gap as to how
to pay for Ukraine’s reconstruction in the short term and once
the war is won. There is no doubt that the west will do its part
when it comes to it, but a question of fairness, or the lack
thereof, remains. It cannot be right for the burden of
reconstruction to fall solely on the shoulders of western
taxpayers, especially as estimates for it are astronomically
high. As has been said, the suggestions on the ground in Ukraine
are that it will cost around $750 billion, and that figure will
only continue to grow as Russian armed forces and mercenaries
continue their indiscriminate destruction.
The aggressor in this case—the Russian Federation—its political
and military leadership, and, yes, its people must pay the price.
They must pay the price for disregarding, and in fact smashing,
the rules and norms of the post-1945 world order that had
guaranteed the peace in Europe for so long. What Russia started
by invading Georgia in 2008, it continued in Crimea, Donbas and
then wider Ukraine, so there must be no more free passes for
Russia to invade, brutalise and plunder. To appease Putin would
only encourage him to greater brutality.
Our current freezing sanctions are robust, wide-ranging and
necessary, but in the light of Russia’s barbarism, they do not go
far enough. There remains some debate as to the quantity of
assets frozen here in the UK—assets of the Russian state and of
individuals, and we have had a discussion about that this
evening—but regardless of the specific value of those frozen
assets in the UK, it is clear that frozen assets worldwide could
form the lion’s share of future support to Ukraine, including for
the vital reconstruction of people’s homes and national
infrastructure.
Seizure, however, requires both political courage and will, and
that has been exhibited by our Canadian allies. I advise my right
hon. Friend the Member for Chingford and Woodford Green ( ) that the Canadians are
doing more than talking about it; they are acting on it. In June
last year, lawmakers in Ottawa empowered the relevant Canadian
Ministers to approach their Attorney General to apply to the
courts to forfeit assets—assets that had already been frozen—for
the benefit of Ukraine. The legislation builds in important
safeguards to protect rights to property, including that any
person who appears to have an interest in the frozen assets may
be heard by the court. None the less, seizures are now under way
specifically in relation to an estimated $26 million held by
Granite Capital Holdings, a company owned by the sanctioned
oligarch Roman Abramovich. Discussions are, I understand, ongoing
about how the proceeds should be used and distributed in Ukraine,
be that directly through the Ukrainian state or by select
non-governmental organisations, but the fact of seizure is now a
legal reality in a friendly nation with a legal system similar to
our own.
Conversations I have had with lawmakers in other allied nations,
such as the US, indicate that they are also considering how to
make seizures legally viable and feasible in their own
jurisdictions, and media reports suggest that this is also the
case in capitals across the EU, such as Tallinn. We should be
doing likewise here in the UK as well. Not to do so, I believe,
risks our finding ourselves in the morally dubious political
situation of handing back frozen assets to Russia and to
sanctioned individuals, or it could lead to individual national
deals with sanctioned people that could put us out of lockstep
with our allies.
One of the many lessons of the last year since the renewed
invasion is how important it is to present a relentlessly united
front to Russia. On the day that we were privileged to welcome
President Zelensky here for his outstanding address, the Prime
Minister made positive and welcome comments about the necessity
of asset seizures, as I note did the Leader of the Opposition.
Now is the time to follow that up with firm action. As of today,
I am confident in predicting that such action would have the
overwhelming support of this House, and I think we have seen the
cross-party support here today. Where there is political will,
there is always a way, as our fellow Canadian parliamentarians
have demonstrated. I strongly welcome this debate, and I urge the
Government to set out a practical and effective plan for frozen
Russian assets to be seized and repurposed to Ukraine’s
benefit.
6.13pm
(Glasgow Central)
(SNP)
I want to speak briefly very much in support of the ten-minute
rule Bill of the hon. Member for Rhondda (Sir ). It seems perfectly obvious
to me that the money is there for winning the war. Money has been
given in weapons, tanks and other methods, but we also need to
invest strongly in building the peace, rebuilding Ukraine and
making sure that people who have absolutely no blame in this
conflict are not left living their lives in ruins.
On 10 December 2022, President Zelensky said:
“Bakhmut, Soledar, Maryinka, Kreminna. For a long time, there is
no living place left on the land of these areas that have not
been damaged by shells and fire”.
Investment must be put into rebuilding all of the cities in
Ukraine that have been damaged—the bridges, the infrastructure
and the things that make life possible. A significant investment
is also required in demining and the removal of ordnance, without
which none of the construction can safely go ahead. That will be
a significant task that the Government must invest in. I am
conscious that occasionally somewhere in Glasgow we unearth a
world war two bomb, so given the intensity of shelling that has
happened in Ukraine, there has to be significant investment in
demining to allow things to go ahead.
This is logical when we recognise that so much of this money is
right here; it is in bank accounts in this country. In some
cases, assets have been frozen, but we must find a way of
reclaiming that money, which does not belong to the oligarchs in
the first place. This is money they have plundered and do not
deserve, and it must be returned to the Ukrainian people to allow
them to rebuild.
As I have said many times in this place, the Economic Crime and
Corporate Transparency Bill requires strengthening. There are
more things it could do to tackle many aspects of money
laundering that allow that money to flow through the United
Kingdom. Transparency International UK has mentioned several
areas where it could be tightened. It could prevent UK companies
from being used to provide a veneer of legitimacy for money
launderers by ensuring transparency over shareholders, members
and partners. That is still not the case in the Bill. It could
improve the Companies House register of accuracy by enabling
Companies House to verify and publish shareholder information. It
could catch rogue operators by providing Companies House with
powers to check the documentation of “know your customer” checks
carried out by third-party agents. Many of those third-party
agents are where the problem lies with verification. There must
also be a credible deterrent to money laundering. We must
resource agencies that have to do the important work of checking
and interrogation to ensure that economic crimes do not continue
to go unpunished, and to have a far more effective system to
prevent the UK from being seen as the location for economic crime
that it has sadly become.
I want to talk a little about Scottish limited partnerships,
which have long been used to give many of these companies a
veneer of respectability. They have been implicated in economic
crime through the Panama papers, and many other scandals over the
years, and they are still being used, not for the purposes for
which they were originally set up 100 years ago, but for hiding
wealth. The Ferret news agency in Scotland has found that, of the
631 SLPs created last year, only three were formed by residents
of Scotland. That should set off an alarm bell. It says to me
that they are not being used by people in Scotland for the
purposes for which they were historically needed. Eighty per
cent. of those SLPs were formed in just three addresses in
central Edinburgh. These are not real companies carrying out real
work; it is happening in plain sight.
The Ferret found that 38 firms registered with MYCO Works, one of
the Edinburgh companies, name Matthew Bradley in their accounts.
He was sanctioned by the United Nations after a fraud
investigation into SLPs. He has links to Serhiy Kurchenko, a
Ukrainian billionaire who fled to Russia after it was alleged
that he failed to pay tax. He was sanctioned by the UK in 2020
and the UK Government alleged at that time that he
“facilitated the supply of oil from Russia companies to their
Crimea-based subsidiaries in the first year of the Russian
occupied Crimea, enabling the Russian companies to bypass EU
sanctions.”
In April this year, the EU sanctioned Kurchenko for aiding
Russia’s attacks on Ukraine and, in 2017, after he fled Ukraine,
prosecutors moved to seize his company’s assets as part of
the
“criminal group organised by Serhiy Kurchenko.”
Bradley was named as the ultimate beneficial owner of UMH Group,
which was in the company’s structure documents. So a web of firms
is being set up under SLPs by those means through the UK, which
the UK Government could be doing a hell of a lot more to clamp
down on. They are allowing that sanctions busting and veneer of
respectability, and it is exploiting the people of Russia as well
as the people of Ukraine. I urge the Government to take the issue
much more seriously and to amend the Bill to shut down all those
loopholes.
6.18pm
Sir (Rhondda) (Lab)
It is a great delight to take part in this debate. I feel as if I
spend more time than I ever thought I would with the right hon.
Member for Chingford and Woodford Green ( ) these days, and I have
friends who are bit disturbed by it. But he probably has friends
who are a bit disturbed by it as well. The important point is
that, if the Russian ambassador, or for that matter the Ukrainian
ambassador, were to look at this debate, they might think that
there are not that many people in this Chamber, but that is not
because of a lack of resolution by the whole membership of this
House, which is determined to ensure that we will do everything
in our power—we will make sure that the Government of this
country and the whole of this country will do everything in their
power—to ensure that Putin does not win this illegal, criminal
war that he is engaged in and has been engaged, to my mind, since
2014, not just since last year.
I am going to talk about three things: sanctions, seizing assets
and who pays. On sanctions, it is often said by Ministers—I am
going to be nice to Ministers because I like this Minister, and
because I want them to do something and sometimes being rude
about them does not work—that we are doing more sanctioning than
we have ever done before. I just gently say that that is not
true. We had a more comprehensive sanctions regime over Iran—not
at the moment, but formerly—than we presently do over Russia. So
we have to consider further sanctioning, which has to happen. It
is true we did not sanction any individuals in relation to Iran
and we are doing more individuals in relation to Russia, but it
is the whole Russian economy that we need to debilitate so it
cannot win the war.
The Minister knows that I worry we are not sanctioning enough
individuals. Sometimes it feels as if the Government feel that
job is done. It is not. As several hon. Members, including my
right hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Hodge Hill (), have said, there is an issue
about sanctions busting. I am certain, although I do not have
proof, that sanctions busting is going on in the UK every single
day of every week and has been ever since we started this
process. For a start, we gave plenty of warning. People have
referred to Roman Abramovich. I recall the then Prime Minister
saying at Prime Minister’s questions that he had been sanctioned,
but it turned out that he had not. That was a pretty good signal
that he was about to be sanctioned. A couple of weeks later,
because of stuff I was able to reveal about what the Home Office
had been saying about Abramovich for several years, he was then
sanctioned. By that time, however, yet more money had been
siphoned off to another part of the world. It is true that the
proceeds of the £2.3 billion sale of Chelsea football club, which
happened in May last year, will eventually go Ukraine, but it has
taken a very long time to put that in place. I know Mr Penrose is
engaged in that and is eager to make that happen as fast as
possible—incidentally, it will dwarf the contribution the UK has
already made— but that contribution was not forced on Abramovich
by law. In the end, he decided to agree to it. So that does not
really quite count.
Treasury licences have been referred to. They are giving carte
blanche to many individuals to circumvent the sanctions regime.
There are undoubtedly enablers in the City of London, the same
enablers we have known for years, who have enabled the dirty
money to swirl around in the UK economy. There are the lawyers,
the very posh law firms with very thick carpets and very thick
marble walls that are doubtless refurbished every two years on
the back of money that was stolen from the Russian people by
people who should have been sanctioned. There are estate agents,
banks and countless individuals who, without any thought to the
morality of the situation, are still happy to enable sanctions
busting. My worry is that there is hardly anybody in Government
tracking down whether that is happening or not. Has anybody
turned up to any estate agent office in Mayfair and said, “Are
you checking whether any of these individuals you are buying and
selling from are sanctioned individuals?” Has anybody done any
investigations? I very much doubt it.
As ever, my hon. Friend is making a brilliant speech. I was
shocked to hear that suspicious activity reports are not
triggering enforcement actions for sanctions busting either. Is
that not an argument for broadening the suspicious activity
report regime, so that it does include people like estate agents?
Surely, we should be using that as evidence to trigger
prosecutions.
Sir
Absolutely. I do not know whether my right hon. Friend has ever
tried to open a bank account in the last few years, but it is
almost impossible for a British Member of Parliament. I suspect
it is much easier for a Russian oligarch to do so than it would
be for anybody else. I really hope the Minister will take away
the view of the whole House that we have to get serious about
cracking down on sanctions busting in the UK.
I like a Magnum when I go to the cinema. It still upsets me that
Unilever thinks that Magnums are essential in Russia, which is
why it is still doing business there. Unilever should be pulling
out completely from Russia. The Russians should forgo their
Magnums—or is it Magna? I do not know what the plural is. For
that matter, Infosys should not be operating in Russia,
either.
I worry that some of our allied countries are providing a very
safe haven for sanctions busting, including the United Arab
Emirates. In the last year, it has become a complete paradise for
dirty Russian oligarch money. If countries such as the UAE want
to remain allies with us, they need to think very carefully. They
may say, “Oh, but it’s only money. We are only doing what you did
for years.” I hope that we in the UK are now learning the lesson
of what happens when we give out golden visas to people just
because they have lots of money, and do not ask any questions. It
ends up biting you on the backside.
On seizing assets, I am sick and tired of the pearl-clutchers.
People say, “Oh, I know. It’s really, really important. We really
have to do something, but you know, Mr Bryant, you don’t
understand. It’s terribly, terribly hard.” I am sorry, but where
there is a will, there is a way. People want to wave sovereign
immunity around all over the place, but what about the sovereign
immunity of Ukraine? That was guaranteed by Putin personally, and
the UK and other countries when we all signed up to the Budapest
accord. Several years later, it turned out that we did not mean
it quite as categorically as we stated on that piece of paper.
There must surely come a time when sovereign immunity has to be
waived because otherwise there is complete impunity when one
country invades another. In the end, that is simply inviting
countries to invade other countries.
I understand that the seizure of oligarchs’ assets is not easy.
Prigozhin’s mother has just managed to win an appeal, as I
understand it. But it would be much easier if there were an
amendment to the Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Bill,
as several Members have mentioned already in this debate, to make
it an offence for a sanctioned individual not to reveal all their
assets. That would certainly make it easier for us to do
that.
On state assets, I do not believe that sovereign immunity can be
absolute. It is preposterous that we are sitting here, watching
Canada and wondering how it will go there. When was it ever the
British attitude to watch what is happening across the other side
of the ocean? As my right hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham,
Hodge Hill, said, it would be much easier for us to take legal
action if, first, we had a United Nations resolution and,
secondly, we set up a special war crimes tribunal to consider the
matter of a war of aggression. Unfortunately, although the
British delegation at the Nuremberg war trials said that a war of
aggression was the ultimate war crime, that has not thus far been
so determined. It would certainly assist us if we were able to
get that. It would also assist us if we were to amend the State
Immunity Act 1978.
I come to the fundamental point: everyone knows that Ukraine will
have to be reconstructed. Cathedrals; schools; libraries;
hospitals; people’s homes; hundreds and hundreds of apartment
buildings have been completely destroyed; roads turned into
craters; bridges destroyed—sometimes by the Ukrainians to prevent
the Russians further invading; electricity pylons. The whole
system is completely in need of reconstruction.
In the end, there are only three options for who will pay for
that. The people of Ukraine cannot afford it, and it is immoral
to say that they should pay. There are Ukraine’s allies, or
rather their taxpayers around the world. I am absolutely certain
that, as individuals, many people in the UK—including in my
constituency—will want to make a personal contribution. The
British taxpayer has already made contributions through the
British Government. But in the end, we are talking about $1
trillion-worth of reconstruction costs already. To be honest, the
£23 billion-worth of Russian state assets sitting in British
banks at the moment will only touch the sides. However, if we add
the €350 billion-worth sitting in European banks, along with the
amounts in Canada, Australia, the USA and all the other countries
in the world, we might just be able to make a dent.
Anybody from Ukraine who is watching this debate will know that
we all stand four-square behind them. We want to do so not only
in our words, but in our deeds. I beg, I implore the Government:
you do not have to use my Bill. My Bill is completely irrelevant;
it is just a way of teasing you along to do the right thing. I
know you want to do the right thing—I mean the Government, not
you, Mr Deputy Speaker, although you probably want to do the
right thing as well. Whenever the Government are prepared to
table the legislation, we all stand ready to vote it through as
swiftly as we can.
6.30pm
(Stirling) (SNP)
It is a pleasure to wind up for the SNP in this very constructive
debate. We support the motion. I commend the right hon. Member
for Chingford and Woodford Green ( ) for moving it; I can
hardly do anything but support it, because I called for the same
thing from this spot on 26 April last year and reiterated that
call on 25 May and 22 September.
The SNP has long been pushing for a Marshall fund to aid the
reconstruction of Ukraine. We have also been pushing for greater
financial transparency within the UK’s financial sector. That is
a good thing in and of itself, but the crisis in Ukraine has
brought an urgency to the need to deal with the UK’s
long-standing problem of dirty money. We want to see action, so I
hope the Minister is taking good note of the constructive
pressure she is feeling today. We want to see more, better,
faster and broader action than we have seen to date.
I appreciate that it is difficult. I am a financial services
lawyer—if we go back far enough—so I know that we are dealing
with some of the slippiest, best advised and best resourced
people in the world, who are very able to exploit loopholes
wherever they exist, but there is a unanimity here and there is a
will. I implore the Minister to do better than we have seen to
date.
The London laundromat has been a long-standing problem for
national security. My predecessor in this role was , who is well known to many
colleagues as the former Member for North East Fife and who is
now a professor of international relations at the University of
St Andrews. He has put it very well:
“For years we have turned a blind eye to Putin’s dirty money,
propaganda and influence in our democracy. Those who called out
the corruption were badged as anti-Russian when it was the
Russians who were Putin’s first victims. It is a shame that many
are only paying attention to his crimes after such grave events.
I hope that real action will be taken. After years of inaction we
owe the people of Ukraine and Putin’s other victims at least
that.”
As we have heard in the many excellent speeches this afternoon,
the scale of reconstruction required in Ukraine is vast.
Estimates vary from €600 billion to upwards of €1 trillion, but
who can calculate it while the conflict is ongoing? It is going
to be a major financial exercise in reconstruction, but the wider
moral principle is surely that it should be Russian dirty money
that pays. If Russian dirty money is good enough to be
sequestrated, it is good enough to be requisitioned for
reconstruction.
This has been a constructive debate. Let me give some examples of
how other states are dealing with the issue. Estonia’s Government
have declared a blueprint for the legal seizure of frozen Russian
assets. The Frozen Assets Repurposing Bill is working its way
through the Canadian Parliament. There is a Swiss law on asset
recovery. Today, the European Parliament is debating precisely
how to tackle the issue. I associate myself with other hon.
Members’ comments that we need an internationally co-ordinated
effort, because any loopholes that are allowed to exist will be
exploited. I particularly commend the actions of the Italian
state: the Guardia di Finanza has made strong strides in seizing
assets.
There is a wider lesson for us all. I very much appreciate the
speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow Central () about properly resourcing
the new financial transparency regime that is working its way
through this House. The Guardia di Finanza proves that if there
is a strong and properly resourced domestic enforcement
mechanism, we will see better results; I strongly believe that
the Government could take that on board. Likewise, the Dutch
Parliament has already created a trust fund that will be funded
by assets in due course, and is working out how it can legally
seize them. There is a huge willingness to see the Government do
more and do better.
Let me end with a couple of, I hope, constructive points. First,
we want to see a wider coalition: we have already seen a
coalition in support of Ukraine, but we also need to see a
coalition in support of these legal measures. I should be
grateful for an assurance from the Minister that the overseas
territories will be very much part of the UK’s new regime in this
regard, because we are seeing pretty significant evidence that
they are being exploited through these loopholes. [Hon. Members:
“Hear, hear.”] I am glad to hear some support from the
Conservative Benches.
My second point raises what is, perhaps, a broader issue. A
number of the UK’s allies are actively engaged in assisting the
Russian state and the oligarchs themselves to get around these
systems, and they will be the source of the loopholes that will
be exploited. Surely the UK is in a diplomatic position to put
considerable pressure on those allies.
Having made those two points, and having referred to the
unanimity we have seen today, I add my own salutations to our
Ukrainian colleagues. There is a coalition of the willing in this
House, and I hope the Government can rise to the opportunity that
it presents.
Mr Deputy Speaker ( )
I call the Opposition spokesman.
6.35pm
(Cardiff South and Penarth)
(Lab/Co-op)
I thank the right hon. Member for Chingford and Woodford Green
( ) for his role in securing
the debate, and I thank Members on both sides of the House for
their expert and powerful contributions. I refer not least to the
expertise and campaigning of Members on our own side, including
my hon. Friend the Member for Rhondda (Sir )—whose Bill I welcome—my right
hon. Friends the Members for Birmingham, Hodge Hill () and for Barking ( ), and my hon. Friend the
Member for St Helens South and Whiston (Ms Rimmer).
Let me also welcome our friends from the Rada of Ukraine. We are
delighted that they are here with us today, and I hope they have
observed that while there is much political division across the
House on many other issues, one issue on which the House and
indeed the country are absolutely united is the need for us to
stand four-square behind Ukraine and ensure that Putin loses this
war. Indeed, there has been a great deal of unity on the matters
discussed today. I, like others, saw with my own eyes the damage
to infrastructure outside Kyiv last September—here I draw
attention to my declaration in the Register of Members’ Financial
Interests. I saw the bridges that had been destroyed, and the
devastation of residential buildings and key economic
infrastructure. It was absolutely shocking, and it is clear that
a huge amount needs to be done.
We in the Opposition have been consistent in our support for the
Government in relation to expansion of the UK’s sanctions regime,
and we have worked constructively with the Government and with
Committees to ensure that it is as strong as possible. That said,
we have serious concerns about the pace at which the Government
continue to act, the glaring gaps in designations and
enforcement, and the apparent reluctance on repurposing frozen
Russian state assets. We have heard very clearly about the huge
economic needs. The Kyiv School of Economics, working in
conjunction with the National Bank of Ukraine, estimates that as
of December the damage to residential and non-residential
infrastructure amounted to $137.8 billion, while the
vice-president of the World Bank suggested that the total
reconstruction cost would be between $525 billion and $630
billion. In this year alone, Ukraine’s national budget has a $38
billion gap.
Moreover, before reconstruction can begin it will be necessary to
clear the huge number of mines and unexploded ordnance that have
been scattered across much of the country, including agricultural
land. The other day I spoke to a representative of the HALO
Trust, who told me that it would take more than a month for every
day of fighting in Ukraine to clear the ground of unexploded
ordnance and munitions. That means that if the war stopped today,
it would take more than 30 years and billions of dollars to make
many areas safe for habitation and economic activity to begin
again.
We welcome what the Government have said about the reconstruction
conference, and we will work across the House to ensure that it
is a success. We also fully support the establishment of a legal
process to provide for the seizure of Russian state assets and
their repurposing to support the recovery and long-term
reconstruction of Ukraine. As we have heard, at least £26 billion
worth of Russian bank reserves are currently frozen In the UK.
Imagine the good that that money could do if it were
reappropriated for reconstruction.
We—indeed, many Members on both sides of the House —have been
pressing the Government on this matter for the last year. I have
been through a list of Government responses. In July last year,
they told us that they were
“considering all options on assets that have been seized and
whether they can contribute towards the reconstruction of
Ukraine.”
In October, they told us that they were
“considering all options on the seizure of Russian-linked
assets”.
In December, they told us that they were
“looking at legally robust mechanisms to seize assets to fund
reconstruction.”
In February they signed the UK-Ukraine declaration of unity,
which included the phrase
“We will pursue all lawful routes to ensure that Russian assets
are made available in support of Ukraine’s reconstruction, in
line with international law.”
We heard today in oral questions that the House should be assured
that the Government were taking this seriously. I very much like
the Minister of State, Foreign, Commonwealth and Development
Office, the right hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (), but the fact is that
there has been no commensurate plan, no announcement and no clear
action taken to move this forward over the last year. I hope that
she can give us some reassurance today that there will be
movement on this issue. She has heard the views of the House. As
we have heard, the EU, the USA, Canada and other states are all
moving in the right direction, so why aren’t we?
We have heard many different suggestions today, but I was
confused to hear the Foreign Secretary say that there was no
precedent for seizing assets. Of course, there is the precedent
of the first Gulf war in Iraq, as the hon. Member for Isle of
Wight () said earlier. The UN
Compensation Commission was established and took in $52.4
billion-worth of Iraqi oil revenues, after 1.5 million claims
from Kuwait, to pay for reconstruction and reparations in
relation to Kuwait. There is much legal advice out there about
the potential to have temporary counter-measures, which would
perhaps deal with some of the legal objections. There is a lot of
scholarly thought out there about that. There is also the
question of whether we could temporarily manage assets to provide
resources for reconstruction. We also support the establishment
of a special tribunal on the crime of aggression, and that could
lead to further institutions and processes to allow for the
seizure and repurposing of assets.
The UN General Assembly has already voted on this, adopting a
resolution during the emergency special session on Ukraine in
November 2022 that called for Russia to pay reparations for its
action against Ukraine. We have heard what many countries are
doing, including the United States. The US Administration
presented six proposals in April last year that would allow
for
“the forfeiture of property linked to Russian kleptocracy, allow
the government to use the proceeds to support Ukraine, and
further strengthen related law enforcement tools”.
We have heard about what the European Union is doing, with the
directive on asset recovery and confiscation and the suggestion
to add the violation of EU sanctions to the list of EU-wide
crimes. We have heard about the debate going on in the European
Parliament today. We have also heard much about Canada, whose
Budget Implementation Act—Bill C-19—contained numerous
provisions. Part 5 of that Act made amendments to the Special
Economic Measures Act, the Justice for Victims of Corrupt Foreign
Officials Act—the Magnitsky law there—and the Seized Property
Management Act. So the United States, the European Union, Canada
and others are moving forward, yet this Government have yet to
set out a clear plan here.
It has also been pointed out today that our regime is failing and
fraying in other ways. I have mentioned the UK-Ukraine
declaration of unity, which states:
“We will also ensure, consistent with our legal systems, that
Russia has no access to the assets we have frozen or immobilised
until it ends, once and for all, its violation of Ukraine’s
sovereignty and territorial integrity”.
But, given the very real concerns about the granting of licences
that my right hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Hodge Hill
has raised on a number of occasions, I want to ask the Minister
whether that is still the case. If we are issuing general
licences, with minimal ministerial oversight, that can allow
assets to be quietly siphoned off with virtually no transparency
on why they are being granted, is that consistent with the
statement that the UK Government signed up to?
I have asked a series of questions on these issues as well, but
scant information has been provided in response. What did become
clear was that the FCDO appears to be playing no role in this. I
shall quote the answer to one of the questions I had an answer
to. It stated:
“While the FCDO works closely with other departments across
government on sanctions, under sanctions regulations, the FCDO
has no formal role in the issue of licences by the UK Government
for (A) Russia and (B) Belarus. The FCDO does not maintain a
central record of contacts from other departments on those
issues.”
That is quite extraordinary. This is a serious issue that the
Government need to look at urgently. Where is the oversight?
Where is the enforcement? We would introduce proper ministerial
oversight of issuing these licences and a joined-up approach
across Government to ensure that every Department was working in
lockstep on these issues to prevent those who seek to skirt our
sanctions regime from doing so.
The question of enforcement has been raised a number of times.
Across the UK’s full sanctions regime, which covers thousands of
individuals and relates to countries including Iran, Belarus and
Syria, only eight fines have been issued in the last four years,
according to the publicly available figures from the Office of
Financial Sanctions Implementation. Despite the fact that 1,471
Russian individuals and 169 entities are subject to UK sanctions
under the Russia regime, no monetary penalties have been issued
against any individual or company for sanctions breaches under
that regime since the start of the war in Ukraine. Indeed, since
24 February 2022, only two monetary penalties have been issued
for breaches, neither of which was under the Russia regime.
We must contrast that with the United States, which has issued 17
penalties since the start of the war, with a value exceeding $43
million. Four of those penalties were specifically linked to the
regime relating to Ukraine, with a value of over $25 million. As
my hon. Friend the Member for Rhondda said, people will clearly
be abusing the regimes. How is it that the United States is
finding people and we are not?
There are clearly areas on which we agree with the Government—we
all want to see the most robust regime, and we stand united with
them in support of Ukraine—but we must seize, not just freeze,
these assets, we must close the loopholes in our regime, and we
must ensure the tightest enforcement against all those who would
seek to aid and abet Putin’s illegal and barbarous war in
Ukraine.
6.45pm
The Minister of State, Foreign, Commonwealth and Development
Office ()
I thank my right hon. Friend the Member for Chingford and
Woodford Green ( ) for securing this
important debate. I am grateful to him and other hon. Members for
the points they have raised, which I will do my best to address
this evening. As ever, I will make sure that we write to Members
if I am not able to pick up any specific points.
As we move into the second year of Putin’s illegal and brutal
war, I am grateful for the ongoing unity shown by hon. Members on
both sides of the House and for the shared determination to
support President Zelensky and all Ukrainians until they prevail.
It is an honour to have some of our Ukrainian friends in the
Gallery today.
Before addressing the seizure of Russian assets, I underline the
magnitude of the UK’s response to Putin’s invasion. Although I
hear the challenge of the hon. Member for Rhondda (Sir ) on the quantum of sanctions
to date, I will set out what we have done so far. The UK alone
has sanctioned more than 1,500 individuals and entities with a
net worth of $145 billion, and we have frozen more than £18
billion-worth of Russian assets—assets that Putin now cannot use
to fund his war machine. We have also introduced an unprecedented
number of trade measures, which have led to a 99% reduction in
imports of goods from Russia and a 77% reduction in exports of UK
goods to Russia. All those measures have been determined to
restrict Putin’s ability to fund and sustain his illegal war. The
measures represent the most severe sanctions ever imposed on
Russia. The package of sanctions to date includes asset freezes
on 23 major Russian banks, with global assets worth $960
billion—that is 80% of Russia’s banking sector—the prohibition of
Sberbank from clearing and the removal of 10 banks from
SWIFT.
I remind the House that we have sanctioned the Wagner Group in
its entirety, and its leader, Prigozhin. My right hon. Friend the
Member for Chelmsford () will know that, although I
cannot comment on whether an organisation is or is not under
consideration for proscription, her comments have been noted.
The Financial Times has revealed that the Wagner Group has
channelled $250 million into its organisation through sanctions
evasion. Is that not evidence that the sanctions implemented
against the Wagner Group are not working? What information can
the Minister supply to persuade the House that the enforcement
regime is actually effective?
I will come back to that in a moment.
The right hon. Gentleman also set out, with his usual
articulateness, a very clear pathway through which the UN and the
international community might work together to seize Russian
state assets. I hope I can reassure him that we will continue to
work at the UN with all like-minded countries to address the
asset seizure challenge.
The latest package of internationally co-ordinated sanctions and
trade sanctions was introduced to mark the anniversary of the
invasion on 24 February, and it includes export bans on every
known item Russia has used on the battlefield. This combined
package of sanctions has been carefully constructed with our
allies to cripple Putin’s supply chains, to limit his ability to
finance his war and to target those who are propping up his
regime. It serves as a stark reminder to Russia and any other
would-be hostile actors of the cost of flagrantly assaulting the
democracy, sovereignty and territorial integrity of another
nation.
As Members have highlighted in the debate, the reconstruction of
Ukraine is absolutely at the top of the international agenda,
while we continue to support Ukraine to defend its country. In
September, the World Bank estimated a cost of $349 billion to
rebuild Ukraine—a figure that has been rising every day since.
Indeed, colleagues have highlighted recent assessments with
figures of about $750 billion. Those are monumental sums to
consider in respect of the reparations that will be needed.
The UK Government will continue to take a leading role in
determining how to assist in this long-term reconstruction
challenge. In June, we will be co-hosting the 2023 Ukraine
recovery conference in London, alongside the Ukrainian
Government. Together, we will mobilise public and private funds
to ensure that Ukraine gets the reconstruction investment it
needs.
We also remain committed to continuing our direct support for
Ukraine. To date, we have helped more than 13 million Ukrainians
affected by the war, providing them with £220 million of vital
humanitarian assistance, delivered through the United Nations,
the Red Cross and other non-governmental organisations. We will
continue to work alongside our Ukrainian friends in support of
their military defence for as long as they need us to do so.
The key issue of seizing Russian assets to fund Ukrainian
reconstruction is one that the Government are extremely focused
on, and we are in close discussions with friends and allies. The
Government remain clear that Russia must be made to pay for the
harm it has caused in its illegal war in Ukraine, in line with
international law. The Prime Minister made that clear in the
London declaration he signed with President Zelensky during his
recent visit to the UK and in the G7 leaders’ statement on 24
February. We have been 100% clear: Putin must pay. We are working
in the FCDO, in consultation with other Whitehall Departments and
our G7 partners, to review all lawful options to make frozen
Russian assets available for rebuilding Ukraine.
Sir
We have a motion before us on the Order Paper, and I hope that
the Government will not oppose it and that we will not have a
Division at the end of the debate. The Government will therefore
be agreeing the following:
“That this House calls on the Government to lay before Parliament
proposals for the seizure of Russian state assets with the
purpose of using such assets to provide support for Ukraine”.
So it is a legitimate question to ask: when will the Government
be introducing the proposals that they are calling on themselves
to introduce?
I thank the hon. Gentleman for that. If I may, I will continue
with my speech before I run out of time. I hope to give him some
assurance on his question.
We are continuing to engage with think-tanks, lawyers and Members
of the House, and those they are working with, to ensure that we
test every available option in detail. I reiterate that I am
genuinely grateful to all colleagues for their interventions and
proposals to help us work on these challenges, and we are meeting
them regularly.
I want to be clear that the Government believe that we should
develop the power for frozen assets to be used to rebuild
Ukraine, to ensure that we can achieve that practically and
lawfully. Given that Ukraine is fighting for its future and the
principles of the UN charter and international law, it would be
an own goal for Ukraine’s allies to risk being seen to act
inconsistently with domestic and international law in their
approach to seizing Russian assets.
Mr Djanogly
Is there not also a concern that if we do not act with our allies
to move ahead on this principle, and we all start doing our own
deals on releasing assets, that would be very damaging for the
wall of sanctions? Indeed, the Ukrainians have said that they
would be very much against individual deals.
I thank my hon. Friend for setting out one of the important
issues that we are making sure we work on as effectively as
possible. We are working very closely with our allies on the
handling of seized Russian assets, and we will continue to do so.
Let us be clear: our international partners face the same
challenge. No country has yet found a legally tested solution.
The right hon. Member for Barking ( ) highlighted that Canada is
testing the first seizure proposals and we are watching closely.
I reassure the House that as progress is made by individual
international partners, we will be right alongside them in
considering how the UK can find solutions here too. Of course, as
has been set out by colleagues, many proposals need UN
leadership, and we will keep on driving that coalition.
In the meantime, we have made it clear that, consistent with our
legal systems, Russia will have no access to the assets we have
frozen or immobilised until it ends, once and for all, its
violation of Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.
Russia will not get a single euro, dollar or pound back until
that is realised.
Colleagues have raised questions about the Economic Crime and
Corporate Transparency Bill. It will sit alongside the National
Security Bill, the Online Safety Bill and the forthcoming
economic crime and fraud strategy. It will bear down on criminals
who abuse our open economy by reforming Companies House to
prevent abuses of limited partnerships; there will also be
reforms to target more effectively information sharing to tackle
money laundering. The right hon. Member for Barking is right
about the effectiveness of section 11 of the Sanctions and
Anti-Money Laundering Act 2018, and it is used regularly.
I know that right hon. and hon. Members will be disappointed that
I cannot speak more fully about sanctions enforcement and OFSI,
as these are matters for His Majesty’s Treasury, but I know they
will continue to raise their concerns directly and I have heard
them today.
I have to press the Minister on this point. Will she and the
Treasury together publish a list of the people who have been
granted licences and exemptions under the sanctions regime, how
many enforcement actions have been taken, and what those actions
have delivered in terms of monetary value?
I will take note of that request and make sure that Treasury
officials get back to the hon. Gentleman.
I draw the House’s attention to the economic deterrence
initiative, which was set out yesterday in the integrated review
refresh. Funded with £50 million over two years, it will improve
our sanctions implementation and enforcement. That will ensure
that we can maximise the impact of all our sanctions, including
by cracking down on sanctions evasion.
My right hon. Friend the Member for Maldon (Sir ) highlighted the oil
price cap, which was brought in at the start of the year at $60.
We know it is already having an effect, but the Price Cap
Coalition is committed to reviewing shortly whether it is both
diminishing Russian revenues and supporting energy market
stability as effectively as it can.
The package of sanctions we have co-ordinated with our allies has
inflicted a severe cost on Putin for his aggressive ambition and
serves as a warning to all would-be aggressors. During President
Zelensky’s recent visit to the UK, he and the Prime Minister made
it clear that Ukraine and the UK remain the closest of friends.
They committed to uphold Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial
integrity, to defeat Russia’s illegal and unprovoked invasion,
and to pursue all lawful routes to ensure that Russian assets are
made available to support Ukraine’s reconstruction, and that is
what we will do.
6.57pm
I am grateful to all who took part in the debate. What we have
shown here, including to all our Ukrainian friends, is the unity
across the House on this issue, and that we will remain united
until the invasion is over and Ukraine has received the money it
needs.
A summary of what Members have said today, for my right hon.
Friend the Minister, is this: we have to do more. We have to do
more to implement existing sanctions, and then we have to do more
to start the process of enabling ourselves to seize those
assets—first Government assets, then private assets—and work in
concert with our friends.
I end with a simple message to our friends in Ukraine and those
who are here today—it is a huge privilege for us to have them
here. We will stay with them until this is over. It will be over
when the reparations have been paid, when Ukraine is rebuilt and
restructured, and when the Ukrainians have their freedom again.
Slava Ukraini, heroyam slava!
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
That this House calls on the Government to lay before Parliament
proposals for the seizure of Russian state assets with the
purpose of using such assets to provide support for Ukraine,
including the rectifying and rebuilding of war damage brought
about by the Russian invasion of that country, and to facilitate
the prosecution of war crimes and atrocities; and further calls
on the Government to provide progress reports on this policy to
the House every six months.
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