MOSCOW, Aug 13 (Reuters) - The Russian broker organising an asset swap scheme that could free up frozen funds for Russian and foreign investors said on Tuesday it had managed to sell 8.1 billion roubles ($87.19 million) worth of securities to non-resident investors.

It was not immediately clear whether foreign investors would be able to access the securities. The broker, Investitsionnaya Palata (Investment Chamber), said additional sanctions imposed while it was collecting bids mean non-resident investors need more time to assess the procedure and risks.

Under the plan, foreign investors would use funds frozen in Russia to buy shares held by Russian investors in the West in companies like Alphabet, Tesla and Microsoft. Similar arrangements would be made in reverse.

Moscow has presented the plan as a way for both Russian and foreign investors to free up assets that have been blocked by Western sanctions and Russian countermeasures since the start of the war in Ukraine more than two years ago.

However, it remains unclear whether Western authorities would cooperate with the asset swaps.

Grigory Marinichev, a lawyer at Morgan Lewis, previously told Reuters that only two of his firm's more than 100 mostly U.S. clients with blocked assets in Russia had expressed even cautious interest in participating.

Many frozen assets of Russian investors are held in Europe. Euroclear, one of the depositories that holds Russian securities, previously said it was difficult to assess whether the Russian proposal was viable.

Investitsionnaya Palata, which is not under Western sanctions, said it had sold about a quarter of the securities submitted for redemption from Russia-based investors, with more than 708,000 individuals partially selling securities, which had been divided into 100 lots, each worth 353.1 million roubles.

($1 = 92.9000 roubles)

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https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/russian-broker-oversees-sale-87-mln-worth-frozen-securities-foreign-investors-2024-08-13/