Two Russian cos secure licenses to unblock clients' frozen assets - NSD

MOSCOW. Dec 6 (Interfax) - Two Russian professional market participants have secured licenses from European regulators to unblock clients' frozen assets, National Settlement Depository (NSD) CEO Viktor Zhidkov said.

"According to our survey among [members of] the Investor Protection Club, 24 professional participants applied to unblock their own assets. The result is zero. And 27 professional participants applied to unblock client assets. The result is two licenses received," Zhidkov told reporters. He did not name the companies that received the licenses.

However, this process is not over yet, he said. "The speed of license processing is not very high due to the extremely small resources allocated for this process. And clearly some number of licenses were simply not finalized," Zhidkov said.

Relations between European central depositories Euroclear and Clearstream and Russia's NSD were essentially cut off almost immediately after the start of the military operation in Ukraine last year. At the time, Russia, responding to tough sanctions, imposed currency and capital restrictions, while the European settlement and clearing systems closed ruble "bridges" and the option of settlements in rubles. The NSD, a division of the Moscow Exchange Group, imposed restrictions on transactions on Euroclear and Clearstream accounts at the beginning of March 2022 on the recommendation of the CBR. The European central depositories, in turn, restricted transactions on NSD accounts.

At the beginning of June 2022, the European Union imposed sanctions on the NSD, leading to its accounts being blocked at Euroclear and Clearstream.

The European Commission issued clarifications in early October under which the authorities of some EU members could allow transactions necessary to close contracts and agreements entered into prior to the imposition of sanctions against the NSD on June 3 until January 7, 2023. Russian market participants filed requests for general licenses from the finance ministries of Belgium and Luxembourg to unblock the assets of all investors not subject to sanctions.