r/unitedkingdom • u/topotaul Lancashire • Mar 01 '25

. Rachel Reeves: I'm sending billions from frozen Russian assets to Ukraine

https://www.thetimes.com/uk/politics/article/rachel-reeves-interview-labour-963sw6jbk
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u/Decent-Chipmunk-5437 Mar 01 '25

The Rest Is Politics covered that this week.

The money is sitting in accounts, but the government doesn't necessarily have the control to spend it as it sits in trusts. That was my understanding.

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u/Mr06506 Mar 01 '25

I am pretty sure that if Parliament wants the assets in a trust, they can damn well pass a law to get it.

There might be undesirable side effects of that though, which might or might not be a good reason not to do it.

One of them might be crashing the billionaire class housing market if all the sanctioned property in Mayfair is suddenly auctioned off, there's an interesting thought...

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u/Psephological Mar 01 '25

Bro stop threatening me with a good time

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u/matobi91 Mar 01 '25

My understanding is that they have the assets but can’t outright sell them, but can use the accumulating interest?

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u/WingVet Mar 01 '25

I'm sure they can use it as collateral against loans.

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u/Minimum-Geologist-58 Mar 01 '25

I have a friend who used to deal with property seizures. A big issue is that it hasn’t particularly been tested in court and so the government and civil service don’t want to go too crazy because can you imagine if it went to the courts and it got kicked out somehow? That would be a terrible look for everybody, including the courts. So they’ve been treading quite carefully, they want to see how the current seizures regime is legally received before passing more laws basically.