Switzerland allowed the use of the assets of the Central Bank of Russia for the restoration of Ukraine

Switzerland considers it legally possible to use the blocked assets of the Bank of Russia to restore Ukraine, said Fabian Mayenfisch, spokeswoman for the Swiss State Secretariat for Economic Affairs (SECO).

“Discussions and ideas are open. Nothing has been decided at the moment. Theoretically, this [передача активов] maybe,” a spokesman said.quote according to RIA Novosti). It is specified that we are talking about 7.4 billion francs (about $ 8.3 billion), which are now in Switzerland.

At the same time, the SECO representative noted that the country has no legal grounds for using other Russian assets (worth $ 8.1 billion), for example, frozen real estate.

At the end of January, State Secretary of the Swiss Foreign Ministry Lilian Lae declaredthat Switzerland has no legal grounds for transferring Russian assets to Ukraine. She noted that the country “respects human rights and the right to property is one of them.”

In the same month, Swiss Foreign Minister Ignazio Cassis toldthat the country is feeling pressure from the international community, which requires the involvement of all states in the process of transferring frozen Russian assets to Ukraine. According to him, the right to property is enshrined in the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights and is on the same level as freedom of speech.

On the probability of using the assets of the Central Bank for the restoration of Ukraine wrote “RIA Novosti” with reference to a high-ranking European source in early February. Then it was reported that the funds are considered, in particular, for their “investment, increase.” “This is a regime of sanctions, not confiscation,” Brussels stressed at the time.

In total, Western countries blocked 300 billion euros of reserves of the Central Bank of the Russian Federation and 19 billion euros of private funds of Russian businessmen, the head of the EC, Ursula von der Leyen, said in November 2022. At the same time, she proposed creating a structure for managing Russian assets. According to her, the blocked funds of the Russian Central Bank and the assets of Russian businessmen confiscated due to sanctions should be combined into a fund, the funds of which should be invested, and the profit from these investments should be used for compensation payments to Ukraine.

The Kremlin called the freezing of Russian assets a theft. At the end of October, the press secretary of the President of the Russian Federation Dmitry Peskov said that the blocking of assets abroad is contrary to international law. He noted that Russia is limited in its actions to combat such a decision, but the Russian authorities will not “sit idly by.”

Andrey Klishas, ​​head of the Committee on Constitutional Legislation and State Building of the Federation Council, in turn, noted that there were no legal grounds for blocking Russian assets in the EU, and the operation “to legalize the stolen” had failed.