Genuine question; given outstanding ICC judgements against Russia, by what means would they pursue this legally? Any judgement made by a Russian court would be irrelevant and I don’t know any other mechanism than the ICC to pursue it elsewhere. Doing so means they’d have to engage with the existing judgements.
Absolute wankery. Well done.
This is how Russia wins. Wankers hand wringing while Putin kills people. Europe needs to pull together to defeat this cunt, not cryarse about legal wankery.
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The EU has already agreed to underwrite or provide guarantees against any successful Russian legal action. Euroclear is a private bank with no govt guarantees of financial support against losses though.
It’s just Belgium being Belgium again i.e a small country trying to big it up in the EU and have their moment in the spotlight.
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To be clear, any country that stands in the way of things that need to be done to defeat Putin can fuck off as far as I’m concerned.
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Sigh…
Clearly it’s such a stupid statement, I thought it would be obvious. And that the similarity with what Putin says about Ukraine not being a real country would resonate.
I’m a bit offended that you actually think that I would be making such a statement seriously.
I still think Belgium are in the wrong and Europe needs to be united.
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Yes, it would be pursuit of the existing judgements. Russian law is irrelevant.
In any reasonable democracy, you want it to be really hard for the state to just seize your assets. You want there to be a really strong process that the state has to use to seize stuff. In most cases, proving that someone has undertaken criminal acts is enough for the proceeds of crime act, but they obviously need to have gone through the courts and been found guilty. I don’t think that this has happened in this case - the individuals that have had assets frozen have not, generally, been found guilty of any crime.
(As a counterpoint, I worked for some western businesses setting up infrastructure in China. Chinese law gives the government the right to seize any asset in the country that it fancies, just because of reasons. The only way that we as advisers could come to terms with this was the rather poor argument that if the Chinese government started doing this to western companies, all inward investment would stop very quickly indeed!)
Thus you might expect that once the dust settles, any individuals that have had assets seized would launch legal action in the EU, basically saying that of course Russia’s actions were heinous blah blah, they themselves are not connected to the Russian state and their assets were wrongfully seized according to the ICC and EU law. It’s right and proper that they should have the right to fight any state asset seizure.
I don’t know the merits of any specific cases, but I’m absolutely sure that legal action will come. It’s a lot of money, it’s probably worth it even if your case has only a 1% chance of success.
If, as @thebiglebowski says, the EU has already provided guarantees to cover Belgium then their stance is bizarre. My only thought in that respect is that the guarantees might need to cover both EU and Belgian law, which may not have been explicitly put in the existing guarantees.
hmmmm
Five diplomats from different European countries, however, complained that Belgium appears to have a secondary agenda in holding onto Russia’s money thanks to the tax generated. They noted Belgium was breaking an international commitment — made last year — to disclose what it was doing with tax from the frozen reserves, which is supposed to go to Ukraine.
The diplomats said the money was still being folded into the Belgian national budget, making it impossible to determine whether Belgium is fully living up to its commitments to Kyiv.
That’s fair enough but to do so, Russia would have to comply with existing judgements made against it, no? And while I take on board that individuals can attempt to pursue this on a ‘sub state’ level, the track record of people successfully doing so is very limited. So long as sanctions were signed off correctly (and, so far as I understand it, they were), it’s a non starter. As Chris notes, this seems to be more about the Belgian govt being less than transparent about what its been doing with the proceeds than genuine fear of litigation.
Yeah, seems so tbh!
I’m not sure I follow? There’s not a shortage of water in a national (or even a regional) sense. The Polar Express people have presumably looked at the overheads and felt it was worth buying a quantity of water over cancelling and issuing refunds to 3,500 people. What they haven’t done is received preferential treament from the water company or stolen the water off schoolchildren.
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A cockpunch to this thread ! It’s going well lads !!
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24,000 households without water since Saturday.
That’s a long time to be buying water* from far afield; using dehumidifier condensate; collecting rainwater, etc.
I don’t think the ‘optics’ are good with that article.
I find myself increasingly supportive the Brighton Main Line 2 project all of a sudden.
Not a small thing, so those cunts still deserve a CP.
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They’re a company keen to avoid the ‘we spent a bajllion pounds on this Christmas experience and the Santa was on crack’ style stories that pop up at this time of year and are reputational suicide. The ‘optics’ of them doing so are that. If they hadn’t done it and cancelled, absolutely none of that water would be any nearer the 24,000 households and you’d still be shitting in a bucket so as a gesture of solidarity it would be completely pointless.
You might like to check what actually constitutes a ‘race’ before the virtue-signalling gets too competitive ITT 
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Would “hate speech” be an acceptable alternative?
Feel free to ramp-up the hyperbole as you see fit 
Not really about me shitting in a bucket. It’s about Doctor’s Surgeries and Dialysis Centre being closed.
People on the Priority Register not receiving their deliveries.
Personally I have helped out a bit by collecting and delivering bottled water like many others here.
OK but, because I’m clearly missing a piece of this jigsaw;
- What should the Spa Valley Railway be doing about it?
- Has the situation been worsened by them securing water to continue their event?
- What would improve locally by them not securing water from elsewhere and cancelling?
As it stands the answers look like ‘nothing’, ‘it hasn’t’ and ‘not at all’ so I’d be keen to get a handle on this.
Are you not getting the merest hint of “let them eat brioche” (for the more accurate quote)?
One thing they could possibly do is swap out the traction from steam to diesel, of course.
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