Two years after Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly declared she was taking the unprecedented step of moving to confiscate millions of dollars from a sanctioned Russian oligarch with assets in Canada, the government has not actually begun the court process to forfeit the money, let alone to hand it over to Ukrainian reconstruction — and it may never happen.

The federal government announced on Dec. 19, 2022, that it had ordered a freeze on $26 million US held in a Canadian bank account by an offshore investment fund, saying the money ultimately belonged to Roman Abramovich, a high-profile ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

It was Ottawa’s first use of newly legislated powers to not just sanction certain people and companies, but to also confiscate their money and sell off their assets based solely on those sanctions — something no other major Western economy has tried.