Switzerland adds eight Belarusian arms-industry companies to Belarus frozen-funds sanctions list

Mechanism

SECO administers Switzerland's Belarus sanctions regime under the Ordinance on Measures against Belarus (SR 946.231.116.9), which largely mirrors the EU's Belarus sanctions architecture. The 12 August 2025 amendment (AS 2025 495) added eight Belarusian companies described in press coverage as active in the arms industry to Annex 2 (frozen-funds list): their assets held in Switzerland are frozen and Swiss persons/entities are prohibited from making funds or economic resources available to them. The amendment was adopted the same day WBF used delegated competence to move an interim tranche of the EU's 18th Russia-sanctions package into force via a separate ordinance (AS 2025 497, 2025-08-12-switzerland-wbf-interim-18th-eu-sanctions-package-russia) — both actions reflect Switzerland's standard pattern of lockstep alignment with EU sanctions rounds targeting the Russia-Belarus military-industrial supply chain.

Severity is set at 2 (quant basis, eight-entity count) — a narrow, company-specific asset-freeze listing rather than a sectoral or economy-wide measure.

Downstream implications

• Swiss banks and financial intermediaries must screen counterparties

against the updated Annex 2 list before year-end compliance reviews.

• Consistent with the pattern of Belarusian arms-sector entities being

targeted as a proxy for Russian military-industrial supply chains that route through Belarus.

Open questions

• The eight company names were not independently extracted from the AS

2025 495 PDF (not machine-readable via automated fetch); GTA's registered-user view lists them but was not accessible without login. Revisit if company-level company_refs are needed downstream.