A private Russian top manager and a top-100 Russian bank, both undisclosed, have received permission from the Belgian regulator on June 27 to unblock their assets in Euroclear depository, Kommersant daily reported citing Delcredere.

Both cases in question are Delcredere’s clients that were reportedly able to redeem a total of $10mn of cash proceeds from the redemption of Eurobonds from Euroclear.

Delcredere representatives stressed to Kommersant that for the first time an application to unblock assets was granted both to the applicant (the bank itself) and against a third party (the bank's top manager). They also noted that the bank's employee did not possess a residence permit of any European country at the time of the application.

However, it will not be possible to transfer the unblocked funds to Russia immediately; the first stage is for the assets to remain in the EU. From Euroclear, the funds will be transferred to the financial institution (in the case of Delcredere clients, the Austrian one) which is declared in the unblocking decision. Thereafter, if compliance and other procedures are passed, the funds can be routed outside the EU, including to the Russian Federation (but not in relation to sanctioned entities).

The experts interviewed by Kommersant know of only a handful of satisfied applications to unblock assets, and the applicant had always had citizenship or a residence permit in EU countries. The total number of such examples does not exceed a dozen. The first to be granted an unblocking permit was the Bank St Petersburg.

The analysts also note that compliance with all the necessary documents for the unblocking application does not guarantee a positive outcome.

A year ago, the Central Bank of Russia (CBR) estimated the amount of blocked Russian assets in National Settlement Depository’s accounts with foreign securities depositories at RUB6 trillion.