America to Squeeze the Swiss More?
Bill Browder tries to intimidate Switzerland using the Americans as muscle, and a Swiss legal scholar is on board with that.
A recent article by Der Bund, a liberal paper out of Bern, has revealed that the American government wishes to extend its squeeze on the Swiss Federation by calling Switzerland ‘Putin’s enabler’, despite the fact that Switzerland already in March broke its own historic neutrality in sanctioning Russian assets, thereby siding with Brussels’ and Washington’s interests even in cases where criminal activity or political alignment cannot be demonstrated.
The new dust-up seems to be emanating from Bill Browder, of Magnitsky case fame, who continues to apply pressure on the Americans, this time via the American’s Helsinki Commission. It seems Mr Browder is unsatisfied with Swiss steps to date to pay him money over the Magnitsky case, the Swiss banks of course being a veritable Piñata waiting for him to whack open. In the Magnitsky case, the Swiss prosecutor made a determination that the requested frozen millions rightly belong to the Russian government, according to the article.
The activist Browder stated ‘There is something rotten in Switzerland’. He also called for the U.S. to limit cooperation with Switzerland on issues of mutual legal assistance, a purely sovereign affair and frankly none of his business. But one has to be careful with Browder: he has a very loud voice in Washington circles among both parties, and Washington has Big Guns.
According to the article, in a speech Bill Browder criticized the Office of the Attorney General of Switzerland, which under former head Michael Lauber he accuses of having been in league with Russia. He called the Office "corrupt or absolutely incompetent". He further said that Switzerland, "long known as a place for war criminals and kleptocrats," is now also a "leading aide" to Russian President Putin and his cronies, the current set of Swiss sanctions obviously being insufficient for him, perhaps, one wonders, because he did not get any of it.
The Bund article goes on to report the statements of a certain retired Basel law professor:
Basel criminal law professor (emeritus) Mark Pieth pointed to gaps in Swiss enforcement of Russia sanctions. He sees these above all in lawyers and financial advisors: "They are not always subject to the Money Laundering Act when doing business with wealthy clients. This means that they are not even obliged to know the identity of their clients. This also means that they cannot report any violations of sanctions provisions and can even hide behind professional secrecy”, as reported by Bund.
Of course, true that this may be, such arrangements have been used to protect generational assets from illicit seizure by foreign governments of ill repute, including being used in WWII by Jews to protect against Nazi predation. It may similarly be that assets held in Switzerland by Russian nationals via holding companies or otherwise are there to avoid being similarly seized by a hungry (and itself sanctioned) Russian state. The fact that sanctions have come about which target various Russians more or less equally and without trial, without even examining the political affiliation of any particular Russian, is ample justification in its own right for such secrecy arrangements. To go after all of them equally is like going after Jews in 1940 just because they came from Germany and are therefore German. ‘Guity! We are seizing your money!’
It is well known that many Russian oligarchs are opposed to Putin, and that Putin has had more than one conflict with ‘his’ oligarchs; many if not most probably got their money in totally legal ways at the time, many of them during the Yeltsin period when foreign carpet baggers came in and raided Russia for assets using locals as legal intermediaries.
Browder has been accused in essence of being one of those carpet baggers, and the Russian state accusation against Browder is that he’s a tax cheat. Whatever the truth is, there is a lot of bad blood between Browder and Putin, and the grudge match is not finished. The point is, we do not accuse Bill Gates or Jeff Bezos of illegality in acquiring their enormous wealth, yet the assumption always seems to be that that the Russians are defacto guilty of ‘something’ while American oligarchs - including carpet baggers - are as pure as the driven snow. We simply do not know, on either side.
The question is, should innocent Russians also suffer asset seizures in Switzerland, considering also that they may be on the same anti-Putin side as the West? Is there to be due process via rule of law, or not? Or can governments everywhere now, like the Canadian government did during the trucker’s strike, simply freeze bank accounts without a shred of due process? If this is the path we are headed down, then God help us all, for like those poor unwitting Canadians, we may be next.
We used to associate such tactics with full-on Fascism. Will Switzerland now be bullied to go down the same road? Well, the reaction in the Swiss Federal Government was quite strong, according to the article:
The whole commotion has left Swiss parliamentarians perplexed. Not even the vice president of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the National Council, Hans-Peter Portmann (FDP), can put the matter in perspective. He wonders "what legitimacy the Helsinki Commission" has at all. In any case, its activities could not have any international impact. Personally, Portmann therefore advises a relaxed approach to the accusations. He suspects that a group of U.S. politicians is merely trying to assert its own economic interests and disparage the Swiss financial center.
I would encourage Mr Portmann to not be so relaxed. These things have a way of spiralling out of control, as the Swiss have seen in other contexts.
In fact, after initial hesitation, Switzerland has so far adopted all EU sanctions against Russia. According to all that is known, this will continue to be the case in the future. And that will not be easy for Switzerland.
No, not easy, because it is a momentous break from Swiss neutrality. Between American hegemonic interests and behavior and Russian aggression in the Ukraine, who decides what is just and fair? Remember the incalculable number of civilian casualties in American foreign wars (Viet Nam, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, to name but a few). Keep in focus at all times, former US State Department head sociopath Madeleine Albright’s interview where she states that killing five hundred thousand children ‘was worth it’ - for a war based on a Neocon lie.
Switzerland’s engagement with the global reserve currency holder is like dancing with the devil – exciting for the first few minutes, then terrifying when hands start coming up the skirt. There are enough psychopaths on both sides; which one shall we choose? Who gets to squeeze the Swiss?
The Bund article continues with astonishing comments by Pieth:
Recently, cunning lawyers (sic) from Zurich and Lucerne, who are suspected of having hidden money for Putin's inner circle, have also received publicity. For them, corruption expert Pieth suggested to the Americans: "Put these Swiss lawyers on the sanctions list. Then they can't even travel to Rimini (an Italian beach resort - ed) without fearing arrest and extradition to the U.S." It remains to be seen whether the threat of such drastic measures will be necessary this time as well before Switzerland responds. (italics and bold - ed)
Ummm, whose side is Pieth on, anyway? Does he believe in using a trial before judgment, or should one convict and seize and imprison without trial? What kind of person is happy to turn in his own countrymen to a foreign power via abduction, let alone without so much as a hearing? Does he feel that his own beliefs – and they can only be beliefs, because without a fair trial no facts are uncovered or adjudicated – are enough to throw actual Swiss citizens into an American supermax prison?
Nor should we forget the lesson of Julian Assange. Pieth would apparently be quite happy to ‘Assange’ his own countrymen on mere suspicion of collaboration with sanctioned Russian interests at the behest of the Americans. Assange has been imprisoned without trial now - virtually and literally - for 10 solid years, to the point where he suffers from a stroke. His own country, Australia, totally abandoned him. The crime he supposedly committed is in genuine dispute, as the accuser is now said to have admitted to lying. No matter, the courts don’t care because the Hegemon wants its pound of flesh.
What now of some Swiss attorneys just making a living doing their legally authorized jobs? Shall we abduct them and throw them into a supermax prison like they tried repeatedly with Marc Rich and soon will with Assange? Is Gitmo waiting for Swiss attorneys, Mr Pieth, and are you the one who will be happy to rat on them and send them there?
If Swiss law needs to change to accommodate the modern world then so be it. Change the laws via a referendum and see if foreign interests respect the results of a direct democracy (well, they apparently don’t now anyway), or if they continue to bay for the blood of the presumed innocent. Respect for democratic process is the hallmark of a civil society; disrespect of process is the hallmark of fascist totalitarianism and thuggery. At least America used to wail about ‘human rights’ when it went in and decimated a target country, but as we see now with the Julian Assange case, and Mr Pieth’s apparent subservience to American hegemonic powers, the days of that thin veneer are long gone.
Finally, one has to ask, why is Der Bund quoting Pieth anyway? One wonders what certain elements of the Swiss press are up to.
9 May 2022 - GITM