MPs Need to Fast-Track New Law to Seize Sanctioned Russian Assets: Senator
This excerpt from CBC News is about Senator Omidvar’s Bill S-217, the Frozen Assets Repurposing Act.
An independent senator is calling on the House of Commons to fast-track a new law she’s proposing that would confiscate billions of dollars of frozen Russian assets and use them to rebuild Ukraine.
Sen. Ratna Omidvar’s bill – titled ”An Act respecting the repurposing of certain seized, frozen or sequestered assets” – is set to be passed by the Senate, which means it will soon be headed for the House of Commons where elected MPs will decide its fate.
Canada’s current array of sanctions laws allow for the freezing of assets but give no legal authority to take that money and use it for other purposes such as rebuilding a battered country.
Canada has joined international allies in sanctioning more than 1,100 Russian individuals and entities to punish President Vladimir Putin and his supporters – rich oligarch enablers – for the Feb. 24 invasion that has reduced vast swaths of Ukraine to rubble and forced millions to flee their homes.
Omidvar said the images of destruction emerging from Ukraine make it essential to enact a law to begin confiscating money before Parliament adjourns for the summer in June.
”I feel the immediacy and the urgency is so important we need to fast-track this bill and call it into law and apply it in the Ukraine situation as soon as we can,” she said in an interview.
Under Omidvar’s proposed legislation, the frozen moneys would be repurposed to support victims of the Russian attacks. That would be a legal rarity on the international financial landscape.
”Every home that is bombed has victims, and victims who flee, victims who are hurt, victims whose lives are destroyed, and there is absolutely no way of helping them. In the current circumstances, everybody’s coffers are empty,” she said.