An investigation by Swiss broadcaster RTS shows that many of the Russian oligarchs with close relations to Switzerland had not been hit by sanctions earlier in the week. However, some have since been added to Switzerland’s official sanction list.
A number of well-known Russian oligarchs live in Switzerland, who are among the nation’s wealthiest residents.
The official Swiss list of sanctioned individuals was last updated on 4 March 2022 and now contains the names of some of these individuals.
On the list published by Switzerland’s State Secretariat for Economic Affairs (SECO) are Gennady Timchenko and Alisher Usmanov, two men with links to Switzerland.
Timchenko is described as a long-time acquaintance of the President of the Russian Federation Vladimir Putin and is broadly described as one of his confidants. He is founder and shareholder of the Volga Group, an investing group with a portfolio of investments in key-sectors of the Russian economy and benefits from his links with Russian decision-makers, said the official document.
Timchenko, a long time resident of Geneva, had an estimated net worth of between CHF 21 and 22 billion in 2021, according to the magazine Bilan.
Usmanov is described as a pro-Kremlin oligarch with particularly close ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin. He has been referred to as one of Vladimir Putin’s favorite oligarchs. He is considered to be one of Russia’s businessmen-officials, who were entrusted with servicing financial flows, but their positions depend on the will of the President, according to the document.
Usmanov is one of Switzerland’s wealthiest residents and resides on the shores of lake Geneva. The magazine Bilan calculated his net worth at between CHF 15 and 16 billion in 2021.
However, far from all wealthy Russians with links to Switzerland are on the official list. In 2021, Bilan’s list of the 300 richest families in Switzerland included 21 individuals from the former USSR.
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