The House of Representatives passed a law to confiscate 6 billion Russian assets

Along with aid to Ukraine and Israel, the US House of Representatives also approved the REPO (Rebuilding Economic Prosperity and Opportunity) Act, which will allow the Joe Biden administration to seize Russian sovereign assets frozen in the United States.

This money will be used to rebuild the Ukrainian economy and compensate for the military damage inflicted by Moscow.

It is about $6 billion that the Central Bank of Russia continued to hold in the United States before the invasion of Ukraine. This is a small fraction of the total sanctioned $300 billion in gold and foreign exchange reserves of the Central Bank of the Russian Federation.

Most of the amount – around $200 billion – is blocked in Europe and its confiscation is questionable: EU authorities are launching a mechanism to seize profits from sanctioned reserves, but not the assets themselves.

Under American law, the White House will be able to seize frozen funds of the Central Bank of the Russian Federation in American banks and transfer them to two funds: the Compensation Fund and the Ukraine Support Fund, reports CNBC.

The Senate will take up the bill on April 23, Democratic Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said. Approval should happen as quickly as possible, Biden said.

It is assumed that the bill will pass in the Senate without a problem. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has taken procedural steps to get the Senate to vote next week on the foreign aid package that was voted down by the House last night, CNN reported. The Senate is on recess next week, but senators will be back to vote on the bills.

The law contains a “brake for Trump”: even if he comes to power, he will not be able to stop the transfer of money until Russia withdraws its troops from Ukraine. Including from Crimea.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov commented that legislation that would allow the US government to unfreeze Russian assets in favor of rebuilding Ukraine would “cause irreparable damage to the American image”. At the same time, Russia will respond with measures from the point of view of its own interest, the Kremlin spokesman added.