Swiss ministry says 11 appeals filed against Russia sanctions
Since the start of the Russia-Ukraine war, Switzerland has received 11 requests by individuals or companies asking to be removed from the list of sanctions, the economics ministry has said.
One person has since been removed from the list, while the other ten requests are still being processed, the ministry told the Swiss news agency Keystone-ATS on Friday.
One person was removed after having previously been withdrawn from the European Union (EU)’s list, confirmed the ministry, which is responsible for managing the Swiss implementation of sanctions.
The legal basis therefore no longer existed to keep the individual on the blacklist, the ministry said. It did not name the person.
+ Could Russia’s frozen foreign reserves be used to rebuild Ukraine
This case may not remain an isolated one: earlier this week, the European Court of Justice (ECJ) annulled the sanctions against two Russian oligarchs, Mikhail Fridman and Petr Aven. These two shareholders in the Alfa Group conglomerate – which includes Alfa Bank, one of Russia’s leading banks – are also on the Swiss list.
However, as the ECJ still has to rule on a second aspect of this case, the cancellation of the sanctions is for now only partial and has not yet come into force.
Time-consuming
A total of 1,703 people and 421 companies are on Switzerland’s sanctions list against Russia, according to the State Secretariat for Economic Affairs (SECO). Individuals and firms can submit a request to the economics ministry to be removed.
Processing such requests is legally complex and time-consuming, and generally takes several months, the ministry says.
Translated from French by DeepL/dos
More
Switzerland has to ‘go above and beyond’ to implement sanctions
This news story has been written and carefully fact-checked by an external editorial team. At SWI swissinfo.ch we select the most relevant news for an international audience and use automatic translation tools such as DeepL to translate it into English. Providing you with automatically translated news gives us the time to write more in-depth articles.
If you want to know more about how we work, have a look here, and if you have feedback on this news story please write to english@swissinfo.ch.
In compliance with the JTI standards
More: SWI swissinfo.ch certified by the Journalism Trust Initiative
You can find an overview of ongoing debates with our journalists here. Please join us!
If you want to start a conversation about a topic raised in this article or want to report factual errors, email us at english@swissinfo.ch.