Switzerland will freeze illicitly acquired assets

June 1 the Foreign Illicit Assets Act will come into force. The law will cover the issues of freezing, appropriation and restitution of illicitly acquired assets.

The new law is supposed to be implemented in those cases, which are impossible to settle under the Foreign Illicit Assets Act. As Switzerland’s Federal Council specifies, «the Act aims at such situations, when foreign state leaders were enriched at the expense of illegal tax acquisition by means of corrupt or other criminal means and then transferred such assets into financial institutions of another state», in Switzerland in our case.

The Act empowers the Swiss authorities to render legal services and to afford an expert for the estimation and compensation of illicitly acquired assets to those states, which are their places of origin.

The Act will make modifications to the Ordinance on the Money Laundering Reporting Office Switzerland. Under the modifications, the Office will be conferred all the powers and will be responsible for gaining the whole information about the assets which shall be checked, freezed or confiscated.

Three separate Ordinances will implement the preventing freezing of assets of several former state leaders Zine El Abidine Ben Ali of Tunisia, Hosni Mubarak of Egypt and Viktor Yanukovych of Ukraine, till 2017. Switzerland’s Federal Council will optionally cover the issue about term expansion of assets freezing of the above mentioned persons under the new Act.

Sources:

https://www.admin.ch/gov/en/start/documentation/media-releases.msg-id-61857.html