$19 billion of Russian assets frozen in Switzerland

Swiss bank Credit Suisse has frozen Russian assets worth 17.6 billion Swiss francs (more than $19 billion), much more than officially reported.

This was reported by Sonntagszeitung.

Earlier we reported that Switzerland adopted the EU sanctions and has since stated that it has blocked Russian financial assets of about 7.5 billion Swiss francs (about $8.1 billion) as well as 15 properties. Overall, Russian assets worth 46.1 billion Swiss francs (nearly $50 billion) were reported.

Now Credit Suisse says it has blocked or frozen 17.6 billion Swiss francs worth of Russian assets. This is more than a third of all registered Russian assets in Switzerland.

Apparently, only about 4 billion of the blocked assets are accounted for by people on the sanctions list. The remaining 13.6 billion francs are assets of people who are under sanctions in other states. In addition, it could be the money of the Russian Central Bank or the Russian state.

It is worth noting that the assets are blocked. This means that they cannot be disposed of. Nevertheless, they are still Russian and are not yet subject to confiscation and transfer to Ukraine as a party affected by Russian aggression.

Earlier, we wrote about the problems related to the confiscation of Russian assets.

Swiss Foreign Minister Ignazio Cassis said that his country supports the idea of confiscating frozen Russian assets and using them to rebuild Ukraine, but the banks are categorically against such a proposal.

At the moment, there is no legal mechanism for the confiscation of Russian assets in Switzerland.

Photo: AFP 2023 / Fabrice Coffrini