Swiss say its 7.5 billion Swiss francs of frozen Russian assets is ‘only a fraction’ of total

SWITZERLAND’S tally of frozen Russian assets rose to 7.5 billion Swiss francs (S$10.8 billion) as the government stepped up efforts to block sanctioned Russians from tapping their villas, bank accounts and other assets.

That figure is up from 6.3 billion Swiss francs in May. Authorities also blocked 15 properties in six cantons, the State Secretariat for Economic Affairs (Seco) said on Thursday (Dec 1).

“The sanctioned amount is only a fraction of all Russian assets in Switzerland,” said Erwin Bollinger, Seco’s head of bilateral economic relations.

Banks in the country hold at least 150 billion francs in Russian assets, the Swiss Bankers Association has said.

Following Russia’s invasion, Switzerland forbade banks from taking deposits of more than 100,000 francs from Russians and said all such existing deposits had to be reported to Seco by the beginning of June. A total of 123 Russian citizens or businesses reported 7,548 “business relationships” to the body, accounting for 46.1 billion francs in assets.

It wasn’t immediately clear what accounts for the large gap between the reported Russian assets and the Swiss Banking Association’s much larger estimate, and Seco officials said they couldn’t directly comment or confirm numbers that are not theirs.

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The Swiss government’s decision to embrace European Union sanctions following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has been strongly criticised by the right-wing Swiss People’s Party for sacrificing the country’s historic neutrality for the sake of sanctions which have little impact.

But others have blasted Switzerland for being too soft on some sanctioned Russians. Swiss authorities in May unfroze accounts belonging to fertiliser billionaire Andrey Melnichenko after he transferred control to his wife. Melnichenko has said he has no political affiliations to the Kremlin and has filed a court challenge against European Union sanctions imposed on him in March.

The Swiss government has also been criticised for trying to have it both ways. Its refusal to grant Germany the right to re-export to Ukraine Swiss-made tank ammunition it had sold to its northern neighbour was dismissed as “completely incomprehensible” by a prominent German politician. BLOOMBERG