Finland Seizes Over $80 Million in Russian Property Due to EU Sanctions

The Russian property arrested due to the conflict in Ukraine includes real estate such as seaside villas, industrial raw materials, more than a dozen yachts, and over 1,000 freight train cars.

Finnish authorities currently hold frozen assets worth more than 80 million euros (some $84 million) due to punitive sanctions imposed on Russia, the daily Helsingin Sanomat has estimated.

The property in question is owned by Russian individuals and entities who are subject to EU sanctions due to the conflict in Ukraine that overall target over 1,000 individuals and 80 entities Brussels regards as complicit in the hostilities.

Frozen real estate include the property of the Rotenberg family, which formerly held major ownership stakes in the Finnish Jokerit ice hockey team that played in the Russia-based KHL League and the Helsinki Arena. Among others, an eight-million-euro seaside villa in the resort town of Hanko in southern Finland, owned by Boris Rotenberg, an industrial tycoon who has held a Finnish passport since 2002, has been arrested.

Regarding luxury items, a total of 21 Russian-owned yachts have been barred from leaving Finland.

Additionally, large deliveries of raw materials have been seized. For instance, up to 44 million euros' worth of iron ore pellets are being held in the Kokkola port area on Finland's west coast, as the EU banned imports of all iron and steel products from Russia and Belarus in March. Regarding commodities, some 1.4 million euros worth of acetic acid were also frozen.

Furthermore, Finland's National Enforcement Authority has seized more than 1,000 Russian freight train cars. It estimates that the value of the wagons and their contents may be in the tens of millions of euros.

The carriages are said to be stored in secret places on sidings and railway yards to avoid tampering or vandalism, Eljas Koistinen, Commercial Director of Finnish railway operator VR said.The confiscated carriages take up about 20 kilometres of track.

Earlier, VR itself stirred considerable confusion during the early stages of the conflict by first banning Russian cargo trains and later re-allowing them, only to block them once again.

Russia launched a special military operation to "demilitarise and de-Nazify" Ukraine on 24 February. Russian President Vladimir Putin emphasised that the plight of Donbass inhabitants, who had suffered years of atrocities at the hands of the Ukrainian government, could no longer be ignored and ordered the operation in response to a call for help by the newly-recognised Donetsk and Lugansk People's Republics.

The West responded by labelling the operation an “invasion” and introduced several rounds of massive sanctions against Russian individuals and organisations, as well as the banking and the energy sector of Russia. Other fields, traditionally seen as non-political, including sports and culture, were also targeted.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov admitted that the Western sanctions are indeed very serious, but Russia had been preparing for them in advance.

For his part, Putin had repeatedly stressed that the policy of containing and weakening Russia was a long-term strategy of the West. At the same time, he emphasised that the crippling sanctions dealt a serious blow to the entire global economy, to the point of upending the West's global dominance both politically and economically.