The government of Switzerland has decided to implement a new law that will make it easier to seize and repatriate illicit wealth stashed in Swiss banks by foreign dictators.
The Federal Council has set 1 July 2016 as the date for the entry into force of the Foreign Illicit Assets Act and related ordinances.
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The law will allow authorities to freeze, confiscate and return illicit assets, even in those cases that cannot be resolved through standard international requests for mutual legal assistance.
It also provides for measures to provide legal support or second experts to assist states where the illicitly acquired assets originated in recovering them.
Three separate ordinances cover the preventive freezing of the assets of former presidents Zine El Abidine Ben Ali of Tunisia, Hosni Mubarak of Egypt and Viktor Yanukovych of Ukraine, and their respective inner circles.
The assets of Tunisian, Egyptian and Ukrainian origin mentioned above will be frozen until 18 January 2017, 10 February 2017 and 27 February 2017, respectively.
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By GlobalData"Thanks to these ordinances there is now greater transparency, predictability and legal certainty in efforts to tackle the problem of illicitly acquired assets," the Swiss government said in a statement.
According to estimates by the Swiss government, Switzerland has returned assets worth nearly CHF1.8bn in the last 15 years, which is more than any other financial centre.
Over the last 15 years, Switzerland has been able to return assets totalling almost CHF 1.8 billion – more than any other financial centre, the statement added.
The latest move is aimed part of the country’s effort to shrug off its image as a secretive for ill-gotten wealth.
Recently, the issue came to the limelight after Swiss private bank BSI was ordered to shut down its Singapore operations owing to serious breaches of anti-money laundering requirements, poor management oversight, and misconduct by some employees. Swiss prosecutors also opened criminal proceedings against BSI.
