Swiss banks start closing the accounts of Russians en masse: details

Swiss banks have started closing accounts for clients who have citizenship of the terrorist country Russia. Financial institutions are closing them even if they have dual citizenship.

Roman Kudinov, managing partner of the Swiss law firm Leolex, told Vedomosti. According to him, several UBS and Credit Suisse clients with dual citizenship have faced the problem.

All of them pay taxes in Switzerland and receive no income and pay no taxes in Russia. Currently, Swiss banks are looking at any ties between their clients and Russia, says Kateryna Popova, partner of the multifamily office of the ITSWM group of companies.

In her practice this year, there was a case when, after checking transactions, one of the banks closed the account of a Swiss citizen because he had transferred several hundred euros to his mother-in-law in Russia many years ago. At the same time, he did not have a Russian passport. In addition, one Swiss bank refused to open accounts for several Israeli citizens who had retained their Russian passports, says Ivan Tikhonenok, head of banking practice at Amond & Smith.

According to him, the banks demanded documentary evidence of renunciation of Russian citizenship in order to continue working with the firm's clients. Another bank closed an account for a client of a Russian consulting company who has Russian citizenship and a residence permit in Switzerland, a source in the company said.

The decision of some Swiss banks to close accounts of Russians with dual citizenship is due to compliance considerations, says Artem Kasumyan, a lawyer at Delcredere. He emphasized that the presence of a Russian passport makes banks spend resources on additional checks.

As previously reported, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Poland and the Czech Republic have called for a ban on the import of grain from Russia and Belarus to the territory of the Commonwealth. The ministers of these countries addressed this call to the European Commission, which had earlier proposed to impose a duty instead of a full embargo on Russian grain.

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