Switzerland Defends Russian Oligarchs as Lavrov Dances With Vietnam

If it’s true that war throws into sharp relief certain national characteristics, the Swiss president may have affirmed that idea by defending the rights of Russian oligarchs. During the Ukraine Recovery Conference at Lugano, President Cassis erected a wall against British, Canadian, and European plans to seize the assets of billionaire Russians sanctioned by the West as a way to help pay for the reconstruction of war-torn Ukraine. Kyiv wants to see $500 billion in frozen Russian assets seized, but If the Swiss leader has his way that won’t be happening anytime soon, if at all.“The right of ownership, the right of property is a fundamental right, a human right,” Mr. Cassis said before the conference concluded yesterday in the southern Swiss town. “You have to ensure the citizens are protected against the power of the state.” With professorial flourish he added, “This is what we call liberal democracies.” What the Swiss leader did not say is that Russian oligarchs, who in the main are not Swiss citizens, have parked more than $200 billion in assets in Switzerland, at least according to an estimate from the Swiss Bankers Association.Ukrainian officials have previously said at least $600 billion is needed to start rebuilding the country, where multiple thousands of homes, schools, roads, and other elements of critical infrastructure have been destroyed since Russia invaded on February 24. At the start of the conference, President Zelensky told participants via video link that this was “a joint task for the entire democratic world,” as the Sun’s Aleksandra Gadzala Tirziu reported. As Russia presses its brutal offensive in eastern Ukraine with increasing success, that task becomes more urgent by the day. Despite its much vaunted neutrality — Switzerland has not fought in an international war since 1815 — Bern has publicly backed the sanctions that the European Union, of which it is not a part, began handing down on Russia in the wake of the invasion. Yet Mr. Cassis’s stubborn refusal to tread on the independence of Swiss banks would appear to undercut the sincerity of that alignment. The tiny country has some of the strictest banking secrecy rules in the world and Mr. Cassis has, according to a report in the Telegraph, “sought to uphold this reputation by resisting calls from the country’s social democrats to introduce legislation allowing for the seizure of Russian assets.”Furthermore, there is an article of the Swiss constitution with respect to individual property rights stipulating that “any limitation of fundamental rights must be justified by public interest.” At least one Swiss NGO, Public Eye, is not convinced that shielding perhaps partially misbegotten Russian assets from confiscation is in the public interest. At the outset of the Lugano parley the group criticized Switzerland, calling it a “safe haven” for Russian oligarchs with close ties to the Kremlin and said that “Switzerland bears a big political responsibility.”***While European leaders packed up to leave Lugano, the globetrotting Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, was making his way to Hanoi for a two-day visit ahead of the G-20 meeting that starts this week in Indonesia. Like Switzerland, Vietnam has remained studiously neutral on the Russian invasion, even voting against a UN resolution to suspend Russia from that body’s Human Rights Council in April. The only other Southeast Asian nation to do so was Laos.While Russian-Vietnamese relations may seem far off the grid from the European theater, Hanoi may at some point be courting trouble from Washington. The Diplomat first reported that Vietnam could conceivably face actions under the Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act, which holds out the threat of sanctions for countries that engage in “significant transactions with Iran, North Korea, or Russia.” That act became law in 2017. Russia and Vietnam have close ties going back to the early days of the Cold War. As The Diplomat also noted, “Russia is a key source of defense equipment for the Vietnamese armed forces; the country reportedly sources around 80 percent of its military technology from Russian arms contractors.” According to Reuters, Mr. Lavrov’s whistle-stop trip to Hanoi came at the invitation of the Vietnamese foreign minister, Bui Thanh Son, to mark the 10th anniversary of the nations’ “comprehensive strategic partnership.”

Switzerland Defends Russian Oligarchs as Lavrov Dances With Vietnam

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