GENEVA – Switzerland has blocked nearly one billion Swiss francs ($1.07 billion) in stolen assets linked to former leaders in four countries at the center of the Arab Spring, the Swiss foreign ministry said Tuesday. Swiss authorities are cooperating with judicial authorities in Tunisia and Egypt to speed restoration of the funds, according to Valentin Zellweger, head of the international law department at the Swiss foreign ministry. The bulk of the assets, nearly 700 million francs, are tied to Egypt's former president Hosni Mubarak and his entourage, he said. Swiss Foreign Minister Didier Burkhalter held talks in Cairo Sunday with his Egyptian counterpart Mohamed Kamal Amr on judicial cooperation to restore the embezzled funds, he said. Some 60 million francs linked to ousted Tunisian president Ben Ali has also been seized, Zellweger said. In line with UN Security Council sanctions, 100 million francs linked to the late Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi and 100 million francs linked to Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad and associates are blocked. Switzerland is the only country that has published the amount of funds it has frozen, Zellweger said. It remained unclear, he said, how long it would take to return the cash to its countries of origin, where in most cases the money is desperately needed for reconstruction or democratization efforts. The fastest such procedure ever carried out by Switzerland took five years and came with its restitution of blocked funds linked to Nigerian dictator Sani Abacha after his reign ended with his death in 1998. While frozen in Switzerland, the funds are managed conservatively, and any interest gains are returned to the country in question, along with the capital. – Agencies
