Estonian financial control authorities on Wednesday reported the freezing of Russian assets worth 20.1 million euros, more than 90 percent of them belonging to two well-known oligarchs, Andrei Melnichenko and Viatcheslav Kantor.
«The frozen funds in credit institutions, financial institutions, bank accounts are about 11.7 million euros,» said one of the heads of the Estonian Financial Intelligence Agency, Laura Aus, who put the frozen tax and customs funds at 8.4 million euros.
Melnichenko is the owner of the fertilizer company Eurochem, which operates mainly in the city of Sillamae, close to the Russian border, while Kantor is the owner of the company DBT, according to the Estonian channel ERR.
Estonian authorities have also reported that high-end electronic equipment has been seized at the border, as well as other luxury goods, such as yachts. The aim, they explain, is to prevent the transfer of goods to Russia that could be used in the military industry, as sanctions make such technologies scarce on the other side of the border.
For the time being, no consensus has been reached on how all these frozen funds should be spent, although there is a part of the international community that advocates that they should be invested to compensate Ukraine for the war damages, valued at 350 billion euros, according to a recent estimate by the World Bank, the European Commission and the Ukrainian government.
