Here is a quote from a footnote in The Final Chapter by Robert Massie page 185.
"Baring Brothers did not deny that for seventy years it held millions of pounds in Russian money. On November 7, 1917, the day the Bolsheviks seized power, the British government froze 4 million pounds deposited at Baring Brothers by the Imperial government. Over the years, interest ballooned this sum to 62 million pounds. In July 1986, in the era of glasnost and perestroika, the governments of Mikhail Gorbachev and Margaret Thatcher decided to wipe the slate clean and use this sum to pay off British holders of Russian Imperial bonds and British and Commonwealth claimants who had lost property or other assets in Russia because of the revolution. The list of claimants was very long: 37,000. The list of property was even longer: 60,000. It ran in importance from oil wells, banks, factories, insurance companies, ships, gold, and copper and coal mines to personal jewelry, furniture, automobiles, and bank balances. One claimant demanded reimbursement for five dozen pair of stockings left behind, another for season tickets for ten performances of the opera which he was unable to attend because of the revolution."
"Between 1987 and 1990, these claims were investigated, values established, and exchange rates calculated. Eventually, bondholders and property owners were compensated at a rate of 54.78 percent of their original value. The existence of this large sum of "tsarist government money" may or may not have been the source of the rumors about "Romanov family money."
