US attempts to freeze Russia’s gold reserves – media

US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen will meet this week with a bipartisan group of senators to discuss the opportunity of freezing Russia’s $132 billion in gold reserves, an American news website Axios reported.   

Maine Senator Angus King claimed the legislation could pass the Senate as early as this week. The initiative is meant to deprive Moscow of the opportunity to mitigate the effects of Western sanctions on its economy by monetizing its large gold reserves, punishising the Kremlin for its military action in Ukraine.   

American politicians behind the initiative believe that Moscow is using gold to hinder the devaluation of its national currency, the ruble. Washington, DC is concerned that vast gold reserves allow the Kremlin to purchase high-value currencies on the international market.   

Russia’s Minister of Finance Anton Siluanov has previously declared that Moscow has lost nearly $300 billion worth of its reserves to US and EU sanctions. The Minister of Foreign Affairs of Russia Sergey Lavrov said that freezing the assets of the Central Bank amounts to “theft”.   -US, (rt.com), 23 March 2022