GENEVA, (Reuters) – Switzerland has found 360 million Swiss francs ($415.8 million) of potentially illegal assets linked to Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi and his circle stashed in the Alpine country, the Foreign Ministry said on Monday.
Some 410 million Swiss francs traced to former Egyp-tian President Hosni Mubarak and 60 million Swiss francs linked to former Tunisian Pre-sident Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali have also been identified, Foreign Ministry spokesman Lars Knuchel said.
“In the case of Libya, it was 360 million Swiss francs,” Knuchel told Reuters. “These amounts are frozen in Switzerland following blocking orders by the Swiss government related to potentially illegal assets in Switzerland”.
Both Tunisia and Egypt — where unrest led to the ousting of Ben Ali and Mubarak — are in touch with Swiss judicial authorities regarding their formal requests for legal assistance to seek return of the funds and property, according to Knuchel.
No such discussions are underway with authorities in Libya, where Gaddafi is clinging to power in the face of an uprising and NATO air strikes.
Neutral Switzerland had previously announced that it was freezing any assets linked to the three North African leaders, thereby requiring financial and other institutions to report any suspicious funds.
The respective amounts were fairly “stable”, based on information provided by Swiss-based financial institutions to authorities, Knuchel said. He declined to name the banks or the cantons (states) in which the accounts or properties are held. “We never specify the institutions. It is not just money, there are real estate assets,” he said.
Swiss Foreign Minister Micheline Calmy-Rey was shown on Swiss television on Monday night telling a news conference in Tunis after meeting Swiss ambassadors from North Africa and the Middle East meeting in the Tunisian capital: “The funds that Mr. Ben Ali put in Switzerland were not very significant. We did not have very good relations with his regime.”
Libya’s foreign ministry has previously denied that Gaddafi holds bank accounts in Switzerland or in other foreign coffers.
Relations between Switzer-land and Libya soured in July 2008 when Geneva police arrested Gaddafi’s son Hannibal on charges of abusing two domestic employees. The charges were later dropped after a confidential settlement negotiated with the victims.
