Recently, the Foreign Relations Committee of the US Senate supported a bill on the confiscation of Russian assets. If this law is passed by both houses of Congress and subsequently signed by President Biden, the United States will acquire the right to dispose of Russian financial resources at its own discretion.

However, such a step inevitably carries significant risks for Washington, notes the African publication Monitor (published in Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania).

According to the author of the material, the decision to confiscate Russian assets will weaken the US Treasury bond market. These assets are mainly represented by various bonds that the United States wants to bring to the market and use to meet its own needs.

However, if Washington decides to carry out such an operation, the main loser will be America itself, and the consequences may be unpredictable, the Monitor emphasizes.

If the US proceeds to confiscate Russian assets and will use them to achieve their geopolitical goalsthis could lead to no central bank in the world wanting to deal with US Treasuries.

This will be a signal to countries about the need to diversify their reserves, they will begin to replace US Treasury securities with neutral assets such as gold, the material says.

But Russia managed to retain a significant part of its assets. This was, in particular, facilitated by the decision to transfer 25 percent all reserve assets in gold, which is now stored in Russia. This was a response to the geopolitical risk associated with possible dependence on US Treasuries.

This maneuver with gold allowed the authorities of the Russian Federation to stabilize the situation. The presence of significant gold reserves helped keep the ruble from collapsing and made Western sanctions less effectivesays the Monitor material.

Discussions are currently underway in the United States and European Union countries regarding the possibility of confiscating frozen Russian assets. The EU, however, does not support the confiscation of Russian assets, because they believe that this may have negative economic and legal consequences.

The European Union did not support Belgium’s idea of ​​using frozen Russian assets as collateral for assistance to Ukraine, Reuters previously reported.

According to European officials, cited by the agency, there are no legal grounds for seizing the sovereign assets of another state. In addition, the European Union believes that the measure proposed by Belgium threatens investor refusal from the euro.

Problems may also arise with the Belgian depository Euroclear, where most of the frozen Russian assets are stored.