US senator shoots at Switzerland for ending criminal proceedings against Russia Competition for SBB: more foreign trains on Swiss rails soon?

The tone of the US senator is harsh. In a letter to US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Republican Roger Wicker sharply criticizes Switzerland. The background to this is the decision of the Federal Prosecutor’s Office to drop the proceedings they had been conducting in connection with the Magnitsky case, a huge fraud case in Russia. A large part of the confiscated CHF 18 million will be released as a result.

“Switzerland’s decision to return illegally obtained profits to the perpetrators of a crime committed by the Putin regime is an affront to our efforts,” Wicker writes. He urged Blinken to raise the matter “immediately” with his Swiss counterpart, Ignazio Cassis, and seek assurances that these funds would not be returned to Russia. The senator points out that two out of three people who would receive money back have been on a US sanctions list since 2014.

Wicker even threatens to worsen relations between Bern and Washington and demands a review of the mutual legal assistance agreements: Switzerland has acted fraudulently in this and similar money laundering cases, he claims. The US could no longer reward such behavior.

The State Department in Washington declined to comment on the armored letter. Because Wicker is a Republican and Blinken is a Democrat, the government can afford not to immediately respond to the senator’s criticism of Switzerland. But she cannot be ignored. A senator from Mississippi since 2007, Wicker is well-connected in the U.S. House of Representatives and wields some influence over security policy debates.

Switzerland felt the effects of this past spring when the Helsinki State Commission in Washington pilloried the Swiss financial center for Russian money. Wicker plays a leading role in the Commission. The event did not shed new light on alleged cooperation between official Switzerland and the Kremlin; However, in a statement, the Federal Council was angry that it had taken place at all, a few months after the start of the war in Ukraine.

Federal prosecutor: “No well-founded suspicion”

The focus of the hearing at the time and the current letter is the Magnitsky affair, which has made international headlines for years. The case is named after Russian tax adviser Sergei Magnitsky. He had uncovered the $230 million tax fraud allegedly committed by a gang with connections in the Kremlin. Magnitsky died in custody in 2009 under unclear circumstances. He had worked for British-American businessman Bill Browder, once one of Russia’s largest financial investors. Today he is an astute critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Part of the amount of the crime ended up in Switzerland. The federal prosecutor’s office opened a criminal investigation into money laundering in 2011 and seized CHF 18 million. However, ten years later, in the summer of 2021, she stopped the procedure because there was “no reasonable suspicion”. At the same time, she denied Browder’s firm Hermitage Capital Management the position as a private plaintiff.

Browder filed a complaint with the Federal Criminal Court. Only with the status of private prosecutor does he have the possibility to challenge the termination of the proceedings. In November 2022, he rejected his complaint. He announced he would move the case to federal court. The 14 million to be released remains locked due to ongoing procedures.

Browder strongly criticized the decision to drop the proceedings. In an interview with the Tamedia newspapers, he recently said that Switzerland had “relied on the expertise of its Fedpol expert, who had been bribed and invited by Russia to hunt bears”.

The former researcher was found guilty of abuse after accepting an invitation to a week-long bear hunt in Russia. However, the court refrained from punishing him – partly because his guilt was “very low”. (aargauerzeitung.ch)