Special Tribunal on Ukraine, confiscation of frozen Russian assets: the European Union on Friday defended a “step-by-step” approach to these two requests from kyiv which raise complex legal issues.
“We want to make sure that all the perpetrators of all types of crimes (committed in Ukraine) will be brought to justice, and that Russia will pay for the reconstruction and compensation” of the victims, declared the European Commissioner for Justice Didier Reynders , during a press conference with the Prosecutor General of Ukraine, Andriï Kostin.
He announced that an “international coordination center for the prosecution of the crime of aggression”, based in The Hague, would be “operational” in July.
It is a kind of prosecutor’s office, intended to “gather and preserve evidence of the crime of aggression and allow discussions between prosecutors (…) not only on investigations, but on possible prosecutions”.
It is envisaged as a first step before the establishment of a special tribunal to try the highest Russian officials, a request from kyiv.
The International Criminal Court (ICC) only has jurisdiction over war crimes and crimes against humanity perpetrated in Ukraine, not the “crime of aggression” committed by Russia, attributable to its most senior leaders.
The EU supports the creation of a competent court for this type of crime, but the Member States differ on the exact form it can take – a special international court based on a multilateral treaty, or a hybrid court, coming under the Ukrainian law but including international judges–.
The interim “parquet” will be located at the headquarters of Eurojust, the EU agency for judicial cooperation in criminal matters. He will be integrated into a “joint investigation team”, already made up of six EU countries (Lithuania, Poland, Estonia, Latvia, Slovakia, Romania) and Ukraine, in which the ICC also participates.
The Ukrainian prosecutor and the European commissioner then took part in the meeting of the EU “task force” on the “freezing and confiscation” of Russian assets.
Didier Reynders indicated that 21.5 billion euros of assets of oligarchs and entities hit by European sanctions had been immobilized in the EU. Not to mention the transactions blocked in Belgium and Luxembourg through the Euroclear and Clearstream clearing houses.
The West has also frozen more than 300 billion euros in assets of the Russian Central Bank.
“For Ukrainians it is extremely important to receive compensation through assets confiscated not only from private individuals who helped the aggressor, but also from the Russian state,” Kostin said.
But this option to confiscate these Russian assets to rebuild Ukraine and compensate victims of war crimes, defended by kyiv, is another legal headache for Westerners.
The European Union set up a working group on Wednesday to precisely locate the frozen assets, and to study the possibilities of using them for these purposes.
The European Commission has proposed the creation of a structure which would be responsible for managing and investing Russian public assets, paying the income thus generated to Ukraine, the capital being intended to be returned to Russia once the sanctions lifted.
The EU is also in the process of putting in place a legal framework to confiscate the assets of sanctioned persons who try to circumvent these sanctions.
“It is a process that is built step by step, as for the prosecution of the crime of aggression, we are working on (the question of) reconstruction and compensation”, commented Didier Reynders.
Switzerland, for its part, estimated on Thursday that the confiscation of frozen Russian private assets would be contrary to fundamental Swiss law.
The Ukrainian prosecutor general said he hoped that “could change” and that Switzerland would “hear Ukraine’s position”.
17/02/2023 15:33:22 – Bruxelles (AFP) – © 2023 AFP
