Swiss court freezes cooperation with Russia on corruption case

The Federal Criminal Court in Bellinzona, southern Switzerland. Keystone / Karl Mathis

A federal court has ruled that Swiss authorities should no longer provide legal assistance to Russia in an ongoing probe into embezzlement. Assets linked to the case, frozen in Geneva, are also to be released.

The Neue Zürcher Zeitung reportsExternal link in its Tuesday edition that the case marks a “legal turning point” sparked by the ongoing Russian military aggression in Ukraine.

In effect, the rulingExternal link by the Federal Criminal Court (dated August 30, 2022) brings to an end several years of cooperation by Swiss authorities in the case of a banking oligarch who Moscow suspected of embezzling money abroad.

After Zurich investigators signalled to Russian authorities in 2019 that they were looking into a possible case of money laundering involving the Ananyev brothers – founders of the Promsvyazbank bank in the 1990s – Moscow officially submitted a request for legal assistance; since the bank had been nationalised in 2017, Russia had been investigating the brothers (and others) for suspected embezzlement of up to $1.4 billion (CHF1.38 billion).

In 2020, after the involvement of the Federal Office of Justice (FOJ), a Geneva account controlled by Dmitri Ananyev and his wife was then frozen, and remained so until now despite various appeals.

No guarantee

Now however, the ruling by the federal court turns the case on its head: not only should Swiss authorities not provide legal assistance to Russia, but the frozen funds should also be released, it said – against the wishes of the FOJ.

In its explanation of the verdict, the court said the attack on Ukraine, as well as Russia’s increasing isolation from international institutions like the UN Charter and the Council of Europe, means that “Russia no longer offers any guarantee that it could respect its contractual obligations under international law”.  

“At the current time, it is extremely doubtful that the Russian Federation would respect any eventual guarantees or other obligations of international public law in terms of the protection of human rights in the framework of legal assistance. As a result, legal assistance to Russia has to be refused”, the court wrote.

Judges also underlined that the Promsvyazbank bank is the target of EU and Swiss sanctions, and that it “receives direct instructions from Russian President Vladimir Putin”. As such, the court said, the bank has a part of responsibility for the current destabilisation in Eastern Ukraine and the illegal annexation of Crimea.