“Seco Receives 220 Hardship Applications During War”

In exceptional cases, Seco can authorize payments from blocked accounts, transfers of blocked assets and the release of blocked economic resources, among other things to avoid cases of hardship. Lukas Regli, deputy head of the sanctions department at Seco, told the Handelszeitung that the authority had received around 220 formal requests from the start of the major Russian invasion until mid-April 2023. In addition to cases of hardship, these also affected other provisions. “Classic cases” are, for example, the settlement of existing transactions or payments for lawyers, since access to Swiss law and courts is guaranteed for those sanctioned. So far, 85 of the 220 applications have been partially or fully approved and two have been rejected. According to sanctions expert Regli, the high number of approved applications can be explained by the fact that lawyers are usually involved – they only submit applications if the prospects of success are good.