Switzerland lifts sanctions on Alisher Usmanov
Restrictions against Mikhail Fridman, one of the Russian billionaires, were also lifted. Switzerland expanded its sanctions list by 254 items.
Switzerland lifts sanctions against Alisher Usmanov
Switzerland has removed Russian billionaires Alisher Usmanov and Mikhail Fridman from its sanctions list. "RBK" reported this, citing the State Secretariat for Economic Affairs (SECO) of the country.
In addition to the billionaires, restrictions were also lifted against Andrey Falaleyev, former rector of the V.I. Vernadsky Crimean Federal University, and the legal entity Redbird Corporate Services Ltd. Sanctions against former State Duma deputy Yuri Shvytkin and designer Aleksandr Leonov were also revoked due to their deaths.
At the same time, Switzerland expanded its sanctions list by 254 positions.
"Among them are 33 Russian banks, one bank from a third country, 17 financial institutions and crypto service providers, five companies from third countries, as well as four airports and two ports of Russia," SECO said in a statement.
After assessing foreign policy and legal factors, the Swiss government decided not to include two Russian citizens in the sanctions list for now. For the same reasons, measures to strengthen export controls were not applied to 14 companies in third countries.
"However, operational measures already implemented under the 20th package of sanctions prevent the circumvention of trade restrictions," SECO stated.
For context, on September 22, the Council of the European Union extended sanctions against Russia for three years, but removed Usmanov and Fridman from the sanctions list. Recently, a German court ruled that the blocking of Alisher Usmanov's lawsuit against the EU Council was unlawful.