The Financial and Analytical Department of the Czech government has blocked the assets of the Ostrava steel company Vítkovice Steel in connection with sanctions against Russia due to the war in Ukraine.
“The company can continue to operate, conduct its business, pay employees and fulfill its business obligations to its partners, but it cannot be sold or its shares transferred to another owner,” Tomasz Weiss, spokesman for the Ministry of Finance, said, adding that they were frozen 100% shares of Vítkovice Steel on a provisional basis.
According to Weiss, the total amount of frozen assets of Russian legal entities and individuals in the Czech Republic now amounts to several billion crowns.
Vítkovice Steel is a traditional European manufacturer of rolled steel and exports 70% of its products. The company is owned by transnational investment funds from post-Soviet countries. In March of this year, there was evidence that shareholding control over Vítkovice Steel was leading to the Russian state-owned bank VEB. However, company spokeswoman Yana Dronska denied the information about the Russian owners, according to her, five Cypriot shareholders are entrepreneurs from the post-Soviet republics, and not from Russia.
The freezing of Russian property is part of Western sanctions against Russia. At the end of April, Finance Minister Zbynek Staniura said that the Czech Republic had frozen Russian assets in the country for almost a billion crowns. According to the minister, if these assets “are identified as possible support for Russian war crimes, then their confiscation is expected in the future.”
