Swiss President Ignazio Cassis listens during the Ukrainian Recovery Conference in Lugano, Switzerland, on July 5, 2022. Alessandro della Valle / Pool via REUTERS
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LUGANO, Switzerland, July 5 (Reuters) – Switzerland has responded well to calls from Ukraine’s prime minister to use the frozen assets of ultra-rich Russians to help fund its country’s 750 billion reconstruction project of dollars.
Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmygal said at a conference in Lugano that the United States, the European Union and Britain had frozen between $ 300 billion and $ 500 billion in Russian assets, money he said could help to rebuild destroyed schools, hospitals and homes. Read more
“We propose to find (a) formula to create national and international legislation to (create) the possibility of confiscation of frozen goods in case of unprovoked aggression,” Shmygal said, referring to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. .
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Such a move would improve global security by deterring unprovoked and unjustified aggression, he said at a news conference when the two-day recovery conference ended. Read more
But Switzerland, which in May reported 6.3 billion Swiss francs ($ 6.5 billion) of frozen Russian assets, has resisted an automatic delivery of wealth. The country, which has adopted EU sanctions against the Russians, has long been a popular destination for Moscow’s elite and a place of retention for Russian wealth.
Swiss President Ignazio Cassis said it was important to protect people from state power and create a legal basis for confiscation of funds.
“According to the rules we have in the vast majority of democracies … we can freeze assets, we can freeze to clarify where those assets are from,” Cassis told reporters.
But questions about the links between money and the war in Ukraine and about the proportionality of the measures also needed to be addressed, Cassis said.
“Now we can make a decision that is perfect for Ukraine, but we create the possibility of making the same decision in many other possibilities and … give much more power to the state and away from the citizen.”
($ 1 = 0.9688 Swiss francs)
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Report by John Revill Edited by Mark Heinrich
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