Sanctions 2025

SWITZERLAND Law and Practice Contributed by: Philippe Reich, Meera Rolaz, Kaspar Projer, Samantha Salsench and Anna Zellweger, Baker McKenzie Switzerland AG

outside of Article 102 paragraph 1 of the Swiss Crimi - nal Code, with the following exception: According to Article 7 paragraph 1 of the Federal Act on Adminis - trative Criminal Law, a legal entity, instead of the indi - vidual being responsible for the sanctions violation, may be fined up to CHF5,000 in case (i) an offence is committed by an enterprise; (ii) the fine in question does not exceed CHF5,000; and (iii) the investigation of the offending person would require disproportion - ate investigative measures. 2.2.3 Civil Enforcement Action The authors are not aware of any case law in this juris - diction relating to civil enforcement action concerning sanctions breaches. However, recent court decisions relate to the enforce - ment of an arbitral award in a situation where the assets in question were held by an entity owned or controlled by an entity listed in Annex 8 to the Ukraine Ordinance. In this regard, the authors refer to judgments of the High Court of Canton Aargau (Civil Court, 4th Cham - ber) of 24 January and 19 May 2025 (ZSU.2024.159; ZSU.2024.292). The case relates to an appeal against the judicial deci - sion to uphold the seizure order concerning the assets owned by the appellant, for the enforcement of a final award (dealing with costs) of the London Court of International Arbitration (LCIA). The appellant argued that the monetary debt had become legally impossible within the meaning of Article 119 of the Swiss Code of Obligations (CO) because no bank would be willing to make a pay - ment to the respondent – an Angolan company that was deemed to be controlled by a company listed in Annex 8 to the Ukraine Ordinance – as this would make them subject to the financial sanctions of its Article 15. This control was derived from the fact that the respondent’s board of directors included repre - sentatives of the aforementioned company, who also held key management positions within the respond - ent. Furthermore, the company received dividends from the respondent and held 41% of the appellant’s shares.

The High Court examined whether the payment aris - ing from the above-mentioned award had become objectively impossible due to the sanctions imposed on the company that controlled the appellant, as defined in Article 119 CO, and ruled in favour of the appeal, deciding accordingly that there was no basis for the seizure. 2.2.4 Criminal Enforcement Action As mentioned above, SECO is responsible for enforc - ing the various Swiss sanctions regimes. To this end, SECO had opened 77 administrative criminal law pro - ceedings under the Ukraine Ordinance and the Bela - rus Ordinance until July 2025. Many of these have been discontinued, but SECO has issued repression orders in 25 cases. SECO has also requested that the Attorney General of Switzerland (OAG) initiate inves - tigations in two cases, as this is permitted for serious offences (Article 14 paragraph 2 EmbA). Unfortunately, little information about these two cas - es is publicly available. In its 2024 annual report, the OAG stated that one case concerns potential offences committed by a Swiss holding company through its foreign subsidiary, and the other relates to non-com - pliance with the asset freeze under Article 15 of the Ukraine Ordinance. Of the less severe offences for which repression orders have been issued, SECO has almost always fined the legal entity rather than the employees involved and the fines were equal to or less than CHF5,000. When considering the criminal enforcement of sanc - tions, it is also important to take into account their role in other criminal provisions. For instance, in a judg - ment of 13 June 2024, the Zurich High Court upheld the initial ruling that found the CEO, the client relation - ship manager and two other members of the manage - ment of Gazprombank Switzerland guilty of failing to exercise due diligence in financial transactions under Article 305ter of the Swiss Criminal Code. This was due to insufficient measures being implemented to clarify beneficial ownership with regard to an account held by a certain Russian client, despite there being indications of straw funding at the time the account was opened and throughout the business relationship.

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