Truth Or Tale: Have Foreign Leaders Hidden Money In Swiss Banks?

(MENAFN- Swissinfo) The trail of“dirty money” in the possession of corrupt public officials has long led to Switzerland's financial centre. It's one that the government has tried to clean up. This content was published on September 19, 2025 - 09:00 2 minutes

Reporter specialised in Swiss foreign affairs, with a side hustle as a sub-editor in the English Department. Previously my focus was on disinformation and fact-checks, which I still produce occasionally.

• More from this auth
• English Departme

My work focuses on engaging with you, our audience, and strengthening trust in our journalism. I develop engagement tools such as multilingual debates and help distribute our content to users across platforms. A former nurse, I later pursued English linguistics and media studies where I developed a keen interest in journalism and news in the digital age.

• More from this auth
• English Departme

Popular uprisings, leaked documents and collaborative media investigations : in recent decades, all of these have led to the discovery of suspicious Swiss bank accounts.

In 2011, for example, as protestors across the Arab world rose up against authoritarian regimes, Switzerland quickly froze hundreds of millions of francs in accounts linked to then-embattled leaders including Bashar al-Assad (Syria) and Muammar al-Gaddafi (Libya).

From Haiti and Peru in Latin America to Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan in Central Asia, by way of Angola and Mali in Africa, several other foreign officials are suspected of having transferred funds stolen from the state to Swiss banks.

In 2022, following revelations from the #SuisseSecrets media investigation, Swissinfo highlighted some of the most notorious cases of kleptocracy touching Swiss soil:

More More Dictators' funds in Switzerland – the biggest scandals

This content was published on Jun 2, 2022 From Marcos to Yanukovych via Mubarak, a rogues' gallery of former leaders who have stashed their stolen cash in Switzerland.

Read more: Dictators' funds in Switzerland – the biggest scandal

MENAFN19092025000210011054ID1110083612