EGYPT: Switzerland freezes possible Mubarak assets

Switzerland has frozen assets possibly belonging to Hosni Mubarak, who stepped down as president of Egypt on Friday after 30 years of rule, a spokesman for the foreign ministry told Reuters Friday.

“I can confirm that Switzerland has frozen possible assets of the former Egyptian president with immediate effect,” spokesman Lars Knuchel told Reuters.

Knuchel declined to specify how much money was involved.

In recent years, Switzerland has worked hard to improve its image as a haven for ill-gotten assets and has also frozen assets belonging to Tunisia's former President Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali as well as those of Ivory Coast's Laurent Gbagbo.

-- Molly Hennessy-Fiske

Photo: An Egyptian woman cries in Cairo's Tahrir Square on Friday at news of the resignation of President Hosni Mubarak. Credit: Tara Todras-Whitehill/Associated Press

Comments

[Robert]

It is said the last act of any dictator is to empty the treasury of the peoples money! Look at Arafat, the Palestinians were starving and clamoring for schools and clean water and Arafat died with an estimated 5-billion in bank accounts. Hopefully that doesn't happen to the people of egypt

[Phineas]

Really? What moral and upstanding people those Swiss are(or at least their government is) ! Are they moral and upstanding enough to return the fees they made on those deposits?

If they really took exception with the legality of such assets, they shouldn't have taken them in the first place. Instead, it's:

"Let's see who wins, then we'll figure out how we'll handle it."

Ex-post facto morality at its finest.

[Robert]

If dictators could no longer access their loot, there would be a lot less incentive to build systems based on graft and corruption.

[Robert NO longer in LA]

NO word from Switzerland on US Congressional assets frozen......no....never!

[mipak]

Unfreeze them and give them back to the Egyptian people.