As Vladimir Putin continues his bloody invasion of Ukraine, US Treasury and Justice Department investigators are searching for and seizing Russian yachts, estates, and other troubles for his regime.. Meanwhile, in Washington, Congressmen Tom Malinowski of New Jersey and Joe Wilson of South Carolina are pushing a bipartisan initiative to find out what powers the executive branch has to liquidate these Russian assets..

This initiative is very important. However, efforts to promote it are not fast enough and persistent enough to provide Ukraine with what it needs.. Lawrence Tribe, professor of constitutional law at Harvard University, writes about this on the pages of the New York Times.. Even if the Justice Department could sell all the yachts and estates of the oligarchs in the coming months, using the money received for military and humanitarian aid, this process would be too slow.. He would not have been able to provide the Armed Forces of Ukraine with tanks, air defense missiles, food and medicine in a timely manner. The war is now in its eighth week. And her price grows. At some point, Americans may break down and refuse to pay bills..

[see_also ids\u003d"

The obvious solution lies right on the surface. President Joe Biden could liquidate tens of billions of dollars of Russia's foreign exchange reserves held by the Russian Central Bank in U.S. accounts. Some estimates put the total at $100 billion.. These assets are already frozen in the Federal Reserve and other banks thanks to sanctions imposed by the US Treasury that banned all transactions of the Russian Central Bank.. New data on the atrocities of the Russian army makes the lifting of these sanctions virtually impossible. So this money is seized forever. Eliminating them will not only be the fastest way to increase US aid to Ukraine without burdening US taxpayers.. It will also send a clear signal that the US is ready to make even the most powerful countries in the world pay if they commit war crimes..

At first glance, this is too radical a step.. And that's why Washington hasn't done it yet.. But the author assures that such a liquidation of Russian money will not be " The United States has diverted funds from hostile foreign governments to various humanitarian causes before.. In 2003, President George W. Bush seized approximately $1.7 billion that the Iraqi government held in US banks.. This money was used to help the Iraqi people and compensate the victims of terrorism.. In 2012, Congress used the frozen assets of the Central Bank of Iran to make payments to families of Iranian terrorist attacks.. In 2019, the Trump administration diverted some frozen Venezuelan central bank assets to fund the work of Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaido.. And in February, the Joe Biden administration began the process of liquidating $7 billion of Afghan Central Bank assets by refusing to hand them over to the Taliban.. Half of the amount went to Afghan humanitarian programs, and half went to payments to the families of those killed and injured during the September 11, 2001 attacks.. Therefore, the author proposes to do the same and send Russian money to help humanitarian organizations and directly to the government of Ukraine.

Since state reserves are the property of the Russian government, unlike the frozen yachts of the oligarchs, they are not protected by private property laws.. The Fifth Amendment prohibits the government from seizing property " And the Supreme Court in 1992 clearly ruled this, as did numerous American federal courts after that.. The prohibition of " And Russia's state reserves do not fall under this category..

[see_also ids\u003d"

Of course, the government in Moscow will complain bitterly and call such a liquidation of assets a " It already spoke about this when the sanctions were imposed.. But Russian violations of the basic principles of international law and human rights weigh more than selfish Russian rhetoric..

For the seizure and liquidation of Russian assets, however, the obstacle will not be the US Constitution, but a blurry body of laws that protect governments from liability on the basis of “sovereign immunity”. But this immunity protects foreign assets from litigation, not liquidation by Congress and the executive branch..