All Assets of Russian Missions in Belgium to Be Unfrozen 'in Coming Days'

All the assets of the Russian Embassy in Belgium and the permanent missions to the European Union and NATO in Brussels will be unlocked at the beginning of the next week, Belgian Minister of Foreign Affairs Didier Reynders said Sunday.

BRUSSELS (Sputnik) — France and Belgium froze Russian government assets, including bank accounts, as part of last year’s court ruling over the now-defunct Yukos oil firm earlier this week.

"We have unlocked all the bank accounts by ING [bank] in Brussels, and we hope that the same will happen to all the bank accounts in the next days, in the beginning of the week. It will be solution for all bank accounts of the Russian embassy, and [the missions] to the NATO and to the European Union," Reynders said in a video statement published by the Belgian Foreign Ministry.

Yukos, which used to be controlled by former oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky, was declared bankrupt by Moscow's Court of Arbitration in 2006. Former Yukos managers claimed that Russian authorities had illegally forced the company out of business in order to obtain its assets.

In July 2014, a court in the Hague order Russia to pay $50 billion to former Yukos shareholders.

Russia considers the seizing of its assets abroad to be illegal, and has hired lawyers and legal experts to defend its case, First Deputy Prime Minister Igor Shuvalov said Friday.