Portraits of ousted Syrian President Bashar al-Assad dumped in a skip in the Damascus suburb of Daraya on Monday. Photo / Rami al Sayed, AFP
Switzerland is home to around 99 million Swiss francs (NZ$190m) in frozen Syrian assets, Bern’s economy ministry told AFP, denying any of it belonged to fallen president Bashar al-Assad.
Those funds were frozen under sanctions Switzerland adopted in 2011 in alignment with the European Union, targeting Syria’s ex-strongman and his associates for his government’s widespread human rights abuses, the ministry said.
But none of them belonged to Assad directly, it added, confirming newspaper Neue Zuercher Zeitung’s reports that relatively few Syrian assets were held in Switzerland’s famously secretive banking system.
When dictators fall – as Assad did after a rebel alliance’s capture of Damascus on Sunday – “Switzerland and its financial centre automatically come to the fore,” the Swiss daily said.
But “a hunt for Assad’s millions” does not seem to be in the offing for Swiss banks, as “financial relations between Switzerland and Syria have been virtually frozen since 2011″, the Zurich-based newspaper added.
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Publish date : 2024-12-11 12:59:00
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