New bill aims to use assets seized from wealthy Russians to arm and rebuild Ukraine

President Biden on Thursday said his administration was reviewing ways to convert assets seized from wealthy Russians with ties to Vladimir Putin and use them to help Ukraine with arms and reconstruction. New Jersey Rep. Tom Malinowski, a Democrat who co-sponsored a bill that passed in the House this week called the Asset Seizure for Ukraine Reconstruction Act, joins Nick Schifrin to discuss.

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  • Nick Schifrin:

    New Jersey Democrat Tom Malinowski is one of the co-sponsors of a bill that passed the House yesterday, the Asset Seizure for Ukraine Reconstruction Act, and he joins me now.

    Representative Malinowski, welcome back to the program.

    Your bill is a sense of Congress. It is nonbinding. But most efforts against oligarchs freeze their assets. Why do you think the U.S. should go further and confiscate those assets and actually convert them to help Ukraine?

  • Rep. Tom Malinowski (D-NJ):

    Putin has caused tens of billions of dollars of damage in Ukraine, at least, not even counting, of course, the horrific loss of life.

    At the same time, we, the United States and our allies, have frozen or blocked potentially hundreds of billions of dollars of Russian assets, up to $300 billion of their Central Bank assets, not to mention yachts and villas and private planes that ostensibly belong to these oligarchs, but, in fact, are the property of Vladimir Putin.

    It seems fitting to me and right that we should be willing to use some of that wealth to help the country that Putin is destroying. We're not going to be returning these yachts anyway anytime soon, even if there's a cease-fire. So, rather than letting them sit and rot in a port somewhere, why not use them to help the country of Ukraine rebuild?

  • Nick Schifrin:

    Is it possibly a slippery slope for Congress to give the power to an administration to seize the assets of a country that it chooses to confront, and then give those assets to another country that administration chooses to support?

  • Rep. Tom Malinowski:

    I think this is a very unique circumstance.

    This is stolen money in the first place. It was money that was stolen from the Russian people by the Putin regime. And I think we also have to remember the fact that we are complicit in this corruption over many, many years. The United States and our European allies have, frankly, welcomed the transfer of this massive wealth from Russia into our real estate, our banks, our hedge funds.

  • Nick Schifrin:

    The rare also legal questions.

    The ACLU criticized an earlier version of your bill for not having enough due process. Do you acknowledge there are concerns about going down the road of the executive branch identifying people to target and then taking their assets?

  • Rep. Tom Malinowski:

    I acknowledge that there is a need to do this in a careful way.

    But, at the same time, I think one mistake we sometimes make is that we apply an American construct to a Russian reality. So, an American lawyer might look at a Russian oligarch who owns a soccer team in England and say, oh, that guy's the owner of the soccer team.

    Anyone who understands how Russia works would say, no, that guy is not the owner of the soccer team. It's the Russian state, it is Putin who is the owner of that soccer team. These are pooled assets that the leader of Russia can use as he pleases.

    And so let's not use our due process to protect — to protect property that was stolen without due process and that is financing a war that is killing thousands and thousands of Ukrainians. And let's seize the opportunity here to be able to do something for the people of Ukraine with the wealth that contributed to the attempted destruction of their country.

  • Nick Schifrin:

    You mentioned possibly hundreds of billions. You even mentioned the Central Bank reserves of Russia that are frozen inside the U.S.

    We're presumably talking about Russian oligarch money, taking that and sending into Ukraine. How much of that can the U.S. actually seize? Isn't most of that money outside the U.S.?

  • Rep. Tom Malinowski:

    Most of it is outside the U.S.

    Maybe it's a few dozens of billions of dollars, if you count the Central Bank assets that are available to the United States. But that's not chump change. That's a lot of money. The European Union has also started a discussion about embracing a similar mechanism.

    So, I think, between the United States and the European Union, there's a lot that we can do. And, yes, I asked Secretary of State Blinken today, for example, whether this principle that we are agreeing on encompasses potentially Central Bank assets. And he says, potentially, yes.

  • Nick Schifrin:

    As we reported, President Biden sent to the Hill a $33 billion supplemental. That is more than five times Ukraine's annual defense budget.

    Is there any point, is there any number past which it is becoming too expensive to support Ukraine?

  • Rep. Tom Malinowski:

    The Ukrainians aren't just fighting for themselves. They're fighting for us. They're fighting for democracy. They're fighting for a set of rules and principles that protect everybody, including the United States of America.

    It is absolutely essential that they win this fight. There's bipartisan support in Congress for doing what is necessary to achieve that goal.

  • Nick Schifrin:

    Tom Malinowski, Democrat of New Jersey, thank you very much.

  • Rep. Tom Malinowski:

    Thank you.

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