Before officials can seize the US CRE assets of Russia's oligarchs, they'll need to identify who owns what—a task made much more difficult by lax disclosure regulations that have made the United States the global "destination of choice" for money laundering for decades.

Experts believe that Russian oligarchs have parked a significant portion of their wealth in CRE properties in the US in purchases that are easier to conceal than the high-profile luxury mansions and superyachts President Biden vowed to seize in his State of the Union address this week.

According to Louise Shelley, director of the transnational crime and corruption center at George Mason University, the government does not have the tools it needs to identify the oligarchs' CRE assets in the US.

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