The Baltic states also kept gold reserves in banks in the United Kingdom. In July 1940 the Bank of England sequestrated the Baltic gold reserves deposited in the UK, partly as a retaliation of the nationalisation of British owned property in the Baltic states by the USSR, but also because Britain considered annexation of the Baltic states unlawful. During the 1950s the USSR claimed the gold regularly but was rejected. In 1967, the Labour government used the reserve in settling mutuals claims with the Soviet Union. On 5 January 1968, an agreement between the UK and USSR was achieved, and the Soviet Union renounced all claims to the Baltic gold held in the Bank of England in return for the waiver of all claims by the UK resulted by the nationalization in the USSR. In 1992 and 1993, the United Kingdom government transferred an equal amount of gold reserves equivalent to £90 million back to the Baltic states.