Switzerland’s Russia Wealth Hunt Earns Criticism Despite $6 Billion Haul

06 Apr 2022, 08:13 PM IST

(Bloomberg) -- Switzerland’s implementation of sanctions against Russian oligarchs has so far netted a haul of around $6 billion in seized assets. But the limits of its hands-off approach are starting to become evident.

Until now, the government has relied on banks to report funds held by sanctioned individuals, and the State Secretariat for Economic Affairs has seized around 10 properties, according to local media reports. Leaders of the Social Democrats, who form part of the government, said Tuesday that SECO doesn’t have the resources to do the job properly.

Critics say Switzerland could be doing much more given that there may be more than $200 billion worth of Russian wealth held by Swiss banks, though there’s little clarity on what the total amount of sanctioned assets might be. Switzerland surprised the world just over a month ago by departing from its tradition of neutrality and saying it would fully embrace the EU’s measures against Russia.

“SECO hasn’t understood that there has been a complete paradigm shift, and it doesn’t even have the necessary resources for these new missions,” Carlo Sommaruga, a lawyer and politician with the Social Democrats, told Le Tribune de Geneve.

The government is due to give an update on its Ukraine-related policies on Thursday, potentially including an updated figure for the Russian assets it’s blocked to date as well whether it will follow the EU’s latest round of sanctions which includes a ban on imports of Russian coal.

Complex Cases

SECO, which has 800 employees and could redeploy staff into new teams as it did during the pandemic, argues that it has implemented all the previous rounds of European Union sanctions in full but that it can take time because of the complexities of each case.

Last month the government said it had frozen close to $6 billion in assets, most of that held by banks. Neighboring Italy, by comparison, reported around 800 million euros ($880 million) belonging to Russian oligarchs and the U.K. has yet to give a figure.

The government is studying a possible participation in an international task force to find Russian assets and is in close contact with the U.S., Swiss President Ignazio Cassis told Tages-Anzeiger in an interview this week.

Cassis defended his government’s actions, saying the the word “passive” is out of place to describe Switzerland’s approach to tracking down sanctioned Russian assets. The country’s mechanism to trace the funds in question is working and that there are constantly new reports, he said.

Still, the Swiss government has remained tight-lipped on whose assets have been seized, and such discretion has been part of the reason why the country has become one of the world’s leading depositories of offshore Russian wealth. Unlike the U.K., which as trumpted its seizures of yachts or luxury mansions and critics, SECO hasn’t announced any such high-profile asset freezes.

Finma, Switzerland’s banking regulator, says local banks are doing a good job in complying with the sanctions, but acknowledges they’re of an unprecedented complexity.

Dealing with these sanctions “is by no means new for the institutions, but the scale and complexity have increased sharply,” said Finma chief Urban Angehrn, adding that his institution has been in contact with Credit Suisse Group AG and UBS Group AG as well as Switzerland’s other major banks on the topic. “Correctly enforcing sanctions requires the utmost care.”

As cornered oligarchs find it increasingly difficult to stash their money out of reach of sanctions, Swiss banks must be particularly vigilant about flagging any suspected acts of money laundering to the Money-Laundering Reporting Office of Switzerland (MROS). Failure to do so can open a bank up to prosecution.

A spokesman for the Swiss Federal Police, which oversees MROS, said last month it hasn’t noticed any increase in the number of suspicious activity reports since the sanctions began.

To only have SECO and not Finma legally mandated to enforce sanctions was a real oversight on the part of the Swiss government, says Mark Pieth, a former law professor at the University of Basel and an anti-corruption expert. Sanctions were first imposed on Russians with assets in Switzerland like Viktor Vekselberg and Gennady Timchenko back in 2014.

“How come a country like Switzerland which such a huge exposure to Russian wealth is so unprepared for this?” says Pieth. “Of course nobody could have predicted the extent of the current war but other countries were more prepared it seems.”