US seeks to freeze Russia’s gold reserves

US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen will meet a bipartisan group of senators this week to discuss the possibility of freezing gold reserves, RT radio (Russia) quoted a source from the US news network Axios on March 23 as saying. worth $132 billion from Russia.

“Minister Yellen regularly meets with members of Congress to discuss legislation. In addition, the Department regularly provides technical assistance related to sanctions laws,” a US Treasury spokesman said.

According to Axios, Senator Angus King, representing Maine, announced the bill could be passed by the Senate as early as this week. The move is intended to deprive Moscow of the opportunity to mitigate the impact of Western sanctions on Moscow’s economy by converting the country’s large gold reserves into cash.

“Russia’s huge gold supply is one of the few remaining assets that President Putin can use to keep his country’s economy from further decline. By targeting these reserves with sanctions, we will isolate Russia from the world economy and complicate Russia’s increasingly costly military campaign,” King explained.

The American politicians behind the proposed sanctions believe that Moscow is using gold to prevent the devaluation of its national currency, the ruble. Washington fears that its huge gold reserves will allow the Kremlin to buy high-value currencies on the international market.

On March 8, the same group of US senators introduced a bill designed to close this loophole in sanctions that allow Russia to trade gold. The bill is titled “Stop Russian GOLD”. If passed, the law would allow the US government to impose secondary sanctions on anyone who sells or buys gold from the Russian Central Bank.

Russian Finance Minister Anton Siluanov previously stated that Moscow has lost nearly $300 billion in reserves due to US and EU sanctions. Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov accused the freezing of assets of the Central Bank of Russia as “theft”. Meanwhile, President Vladimir Putin described the sanctions against Russia as “a completely blatant act of aggression” and “a war waged by economic, political and informational means”. “.