Financial measures: freezes, deposits, services and trusts

The freeze and the prohibition to make funds available

The asset freeze is the oldest and most familiar instrument. Article 15 of the Ukraine Ordinance freezes the funds and economic resources owned or controlled, directly or indirectly, by the natural persons, companies and organizations listed in the annex and prohibits making funds or economic resources available to them. When the first listings took effect on 28 February 2022, FINMA reminded the financial intermediaries under its supervision that they must block the corresponding assets immediately, must not enter into new business relationships with the listed persons and must report such relationships to SECO. It added a point that is easily overlooked: the report to SECO does not release the intermediary from its duty to file a report with the Money Laundering Reporting Office Switzerland (MROS) under Article 9 of the Anti-Money Laundering Act where the conditions of that provision are met.¹ Because the two reporting channels serve different purposes, a bank in Lugano that freezes a listed client's account will often have to use both.

The freeze covers economic resources as well as money. Real estate is the most visible example. When the first listings were adopted in March 2022, the Federal Office of Justice transmitted the list of sanctioned persons to the cantons, whose land registries checked whether listed persons owned property. In Ticino a single property was found: a villa in Brione sopra Minusio above Locarno owned by Andrei Klishas, a member of the Russian Federation Council. At that time eleven properties in four cantons had been blocked nationally.² The number later rose to fifteen properties in six cantons at the end of 2022 and to seventeen in April 2024 before falling to fourteen in 2025.³ A freeze of real estate prevents its sale, encumbrance and letting. It does not transfer ownership. The owner remains liable for taxes and maintenance, which the authorities may authorize to be paid from frozen funds.

Article 16 of the ordinance requires persons and institutions that hold or manage frozen funds, or know of frozen economic resources, to report them to SECO without delay. On the Italian side of the border the corresponding obligation under Article 7 of Legislative Decree No. 109 of 22 June 2007 requires reports to the Financial Intelligence Unit (Unità di informazione finanziaria, UIF) within thirty days, with reports on economic resources going to the currency police of the Guardia di Finanza.⁴ A Ticino group with an Italian branch must therefore file in both countries, under different deadlines and with different recipients.

Ownership and control

The freeze extends from the listed person to the entities that he owns or controls. As the sanctions lawyer Marc Gilliéron explained to Swiss Italian television in March 2022, sanctions strike first at the assets of a person and extend to the assets that the person controls through companies.⁵ This rule placed the Lugano subsidiaries of Russian steel groups in a difficult position when their ultimate owners were listed. The subsidiaries themselves did not appear on the list. Their banks, counterparties and insurers nevertheless had to decide whether the companies were owned or controlled by a listed person and therefore frozen. They could apply to SECO for authorizations that would allow them to continue operations, for instance by showing that the funds generated in Ticino did not flow to the sanctioned owner.⁶

Swiss practice is set out in SECO's interpretive guidance, which seeks to follow the implementation practice of the European Union as closely as possible. An entity is treated as owned by a listed person if that person holds, directly or indirectly, 50 per cent or more of its ownership interests, and the holdings of several listed persons are in principle added together. It is treated as controlled if one of eight criteria is met, among them the power to appoint or remove the majority of the board, a formal or factual majority of the voting rights, a right to exercise a dominant influence under a contract or the articles, the power to dispose of its funds and a dominant influence exercised as a lender. Once a criterion is met, control is presumed unless the contrary is shown in the individual case.⁷ Control is a matter of evaluation. A transfer of shares to a family member or a trust shortly before or after a listing does not necessarily end control. SECO treats the transferred assets as frozen where there is a reasonable suspicion that the listed person keeps control, looking at the family relationship, the economic independence of the recipient, the value and frequency of the transfers compared with earlier practice and whether the terms were at arm's length. The European Union, for its part, has listed relatives and associates of oligarchs who received such transfers. The American rule, discussed later in this chapter, is narrower in one respect: it looks only at ownership, although it also aggregates the holdings of several blocked persons.

Notes

1. FINMA, "Sanctions: SR 946.231.176.72", news of 28 February 2022, https://www.finma.ch/en/news/2022/02/20220228-sr-946-231-176-72/; Federal Act of 10 October 1997 on Combating Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing (Anti-Money Laundering Act, AMLA), SR 955.0, Art. 9. ↩
2. RSI, "Russia e sanzioni, bloccata una villa in Ticino", 4 March 2022, https://www.rsi.ch/info/ticino-grigioni-e-insubria/Russia-e-sanzioni-bloccata-una-villa-in-Ticino--1791192.html. ↩
3. Moneycab, "Russische Vermögen in Höhe von 7,5 Milliarden Franken gesperrt", 1 December 2022, https://www.moneycab.com/finanz/1239-personen-und-116-unternehmen-in-der-schweiz-sanktioniert/amp/ (15 properties in six cantons); swissinfo.ch, "Wo steht die Schweiz in Sachen eingefrorener russischer Gelder?", 1 May 2024, https://www.swissinfo.ch/ger/aussenpolitik/wo-steht-die-schweiz-in-sachen-eingefrorener-russischer-gelder/76344074 (17 properties); finews.ch, "Schweiz sperrt noch mehr russische Vermögenswerte", 1 April 2025, https://www.finews.ch/news/banken/67012-russland-vermoegenswerte-sanktionen-eu-seco-zentralbank-frankenanleihen (14 properties). ↩
4. Ukraine Ordinance, Art. 16 para. 1 ("müssen dies dem SECO unverzüglich melden"), https://www.droit-bilingue.ch/de-fr/9/94/946.231.176.72-16-30.html; Unità di informazione finanziaria per l'Italia, "Contrasto al finanziamento del terrorismo e dell'attività dei Paesi che minacciano la pace", https://uif.bancaditalia.it/adempimenti-operatori/contrasto/index.html (Art. 7 paras 1–3 D.Lgs. 109/2007: report within thirty days; economic resources to the Nucleo speciale di polizia valutaria). ↩
5. RSI, "Oligarchi in lista nera, pagano anche le società" (above) ("Le sanzioni colpiscono in primis i beni di una persona; ma prevedono anche il blocco dei beni che sono controllati da queste persone attraverso delle società"). ↩
6. RSI, "Oligarchi in lista nera, pagano anche le società" (above) (possibility of applying to SECO for exceptions; no statement from the companies). ↩
7. Ukraine Ordinance, Art. 15 para. 1 lit. c (entities "im Eigentum oder unter Kontrolle" of listed persons), https://www.droit-bilingue.ch/de-fr/9/94/946.231.176.72-15-29.html; SECO, Auslegungshilfe Sanktionsmassnahmen (above), introduction ("möglichst eng an die Umsetzungspraxis in der EU anzulehnen"), section 1.10 ("direkt oder indirekt 50% oder mehr der Eigentumsanteile"; holdings of several sanctioned persons "grundsätzlich zusammengerechnet") and section 1.11 (criteria a–h; control presumed "es sei denn, dass im Einzelfall das Gegenteil nachgewiesen werden kann"), with the criteria for transfers to third parties ("begründeter Verdacht"). ↩

For general information only. This article does not constitute legal or tax advice, does not replace advice on an individual case and creates no lawyer-client relationship. It reflects the legal position as of October 2026.