Germany's federal prosecutor has raised the issue of confiscating hundreds of millions of euros of frozen Russian assets, which could be the first such precedent in the country, Spiegel reports.

According to the publication, Federal Prosecutor Peter Frank has filed a motion with the Higher Regional Court of Frankfurt am Main to confiscate 720 million euros of frozen Russian assets to the state budget.

If the process goes ahead, it will be the first such precedent for Germany. Until now, sanctioned Russian assets have only been frozen, depriving their Russian owners of the ability to dispose of them, but retaining ownership.

In particular, we are talking about money from the National Settlement Depository of the Moscow Stock Exchange, which was frozen in the summer of 2022.

According to Spiegel, as soon as it was confirmed that these assets were included in the EU sanctions list, JP Morgan received a request to transfer more than €720 million to the Commerzbank account of another Moscow Exchange subsidiary, National Clearing Corporation. Due to the sanctions, the banks refused to execute the transaction.

However, investigators are now considering this as grounds for confiscation of the funds as an object of the crime, as an attempt to withdraw them after the sanctions were announced may be considered an attempt to circumvent EU sanctions.

Since there is almost no chance of arresting and prosecuting the offenders, the state may try to confiscate the funds by court order.

The publication also notes that Germany has had great difficulty even tracing Russian money since the beginning of the sanctions. Even after the creation of a special working group, this remained a problem because the real owners of luxury real estate, yachts and cars are hiding behind complex schemes.