Sanctions without consequences: No Russian oligarch has disclosed assets

This information goes back to the response of the Federal Ministry of Economics to a request from Left MP Christian Görke.

The letter was exclusively available to the Reuters news agency on Tuesday.

Sanctioned persons - including several Russian oligarchs since the attack on Ukraine - actually have to disclose their assets.

This was decided by the legislature in May in the first part of a law to improve the enforcement of sanctions.

The financial politician Görke therefore spoke of an embarrassing defeat for the traffic light coalition of SPD, Greens and FDP.

"The reporting obligation has flopped and urgently needs to be tightened up." It must be extended to people who do business with oligarchs themselves - such as notaries, brokers, used car dealers, art brokers and banks.

"It's not enough to just put the names of the oligarchs on the sanctions list." They laughed about it while authorities struggled to identify and freeze their assets.

According to the letter from Udo Philipp, State Secretary in the Ministry of Economic Affairs led by the Greens, assets of 4.28 billion euros are currently frozen to the knowledge of the federal government.

This is the sum for Germany due to the EU sanctions regulations that were issued in the wake of the Russian attack on Ukraine at the end of February.

EUR 2.28 billion of this was reported to the Bundesbank by domestic financial institutions.

According to an overview, only smaller sums have been added since the end of June.

Most of the assets frozen reported by domestic banks happened in June.

With the first part of the Sanctions Enforcement Act, the cooperation between the responsible authorities should be intensified.

It would be better for them to get information that is already available elsewhere.

Their responsibilities have also been expanded.

Further measures are to be implemented in an additional legislative procedure from the middle of this year.

Because according to government representatives, asset determination reaches its limits when oligarchs conceal their assets through complex corporate structures.

A central coordination office is therefore planned.

There should also be a register - for assets of unclear origin and for sanctioned assets.

In the Money Laundering Act, an obligation to report violations of sanctions is to be added, and a whistleblower office is to be set up.