One more step towards the transfer of Russian assets from Washington to kyiv.
US President Joe Biden is proposing on Thursday to transfer to Ukraine assets seized from Russian oligarchs.
The liquidation of these “kleptocratic” assets would make it possible to transfer the proceeds to kyiv “to compensate for the damage (caused to Ukraine) by Russian aggression”, specifies the American executive in a press release.
On Tuesday, Justice Minister Merrick Garland backed a parliamentary initiative to hand over the assets in question “directly” to war-torn Ukraine.
"We would support a bill that would allow some of that money to go directly to Ukraine," he said during a Senate committee hearing.
Read alsoUkraine: Washington announces new aid and the return of its diplomats to the country
In early April, lawmakers failed to back a bill that would have authorized the White House to liquidate assets seized from Russian billionaires to return the funds to kyiv.
The ACLU, a powerful organization for the defense of freedoms, had indicated shortly before that such a project would violate the Constitution, the oligarchs having no means of recourse in court to challenge the administrative decision.
Assets estimated at more than five million dollars
This law would have allowed the federal state to confiscate, from sanctioned Russian citizens, property estimated at more than five million dollars.
The United States and European authorities have seized several yachts linked to Russian tycoons since Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24.
In March, the United States announced the creation of a cell dedicated to the prosecution of "corrupt Russian oligarchs" and all those who violate the sanctions adopted by Washington against Moscow.
“We will find your ill-gotten gains,” the US president told Russian oligarchs during his State of the Union address, warning them that this cell would “find and seize their yachts, their luxury apartments, their private jets.” .
In early April, a yacht belonging to an oligarch close to Vladimir Putin was seized in Spain, at the request of the United States.