Europe’s playground for billionaires is joining the crackdown on Russian oligarchs amid Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.
Monaco’s Prince Albert said the ultra-chic Mediterranean Sea tax haven inside southern France will begin freezing and seizing assets, as well as imposing sanctions on certain Russians, joining international efforts to put the squeeze on Moscow. That could mean impounding superyachts that Russian billionaires dock there while gambling or just visiting their tony getaway homes.
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“The Principality has adopted and implemented, without delay, procedures for freezing funds and economic sanctions identical to those taken by most European States,” the palace said in a statement.
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The palace did not say whose assets would be frozen. On Monday, France said it would seize assets of Russians listed on sanctions lists, including properties, yachts, and luxury cars.
“We have the legal powers to seize all of these assets,” French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire said after a crisis meeting with French President Emmanuel Macron.
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Russia’s billionaires, many of whom have been individually targeted by global banking systems, are hemorrhaging money amid international sanctions. Forbes reported last week that Russia’s more than 100 billionaires had lost more than $126 billion since mid-February, including $71 billion lost on Thursday alone.
A senior U.S. defense official vowed over the weekend that “we will launch a multilateral trans-Atlantic task force to identify, hunt down, and freeze the assets of sanctioned Russian companies and oligarchs — their yachts, their mansions, and any ill-gotten gains that we can find and freeze under the law.”
