{"id":21146,"date":"2026-02-27T22:03:32","date_gmt":"2026-02-27T22:03:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/21146\/"},"modified":"2026-02-27T22:03:32","modified_gmt":"2026-02-27T22:03:32","slug":"switzerlands-mbaer-bank-faces-finma-wind-down-amid-u-s-pressure-over-sanctions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/21146\/","title":{"rendered":"Switzerland&#8217;s MBaer Bank Faces FINMA Wind-Down Amid U.S. Pressure over Sanctions"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>&#13;<\/p>\n<p>Switzerland&#8217;s financial regulatory body, FINMA, announced it will wind down MBaer Merchant Bank AG after the U.S. threatened to sever the bank&#8217;s access to its financial system. The Zurich-based bank is accused of facilitating Russian money laundering and aiding organizations linked to Iran&#8217;s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.<\/p>\n<p>FINMA identified deficient anti-money-laundering controls, noting that 80% of MBaer&#8217;s business relationships were high risk. The bank&#8217;s compliance recommendations were systematically ignored, even executing transactions for clients on sanctions lists, exposing disproportionate risks to the Swiss financial center.<\/p>\n<p>The U.S. and Switzerland have collaborated on addressing these systemic risks, with the U.S. opting for a rulemaking notice over direct sanctions under the USA Patriot Act. MBaer is now in liquidation, with its board resigned and transactions restricted to Swiss francs.<\/p>\n<p>&#13;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"&#13; Switzerland&#8217;s financial regulatory body, FINMA, announced it will wind down MBaer Merchant Bank AG after the U.S.&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":21147,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[4],"tags":[13929,2059,13835,13931,13047,13932,13042,1932,13930,17,12760],"class_list":["post-21146","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-switzerland","tag-anti-money-laundering","tag-collaboration","tag-finma","tag-illicit-finance","tag-islamic-revolutionary-guard-corps","tag-liquidation","tag-mbaer-merchant-bank","tag-sanctions","tag-swiss-banking","tag-switzerland","tag-u-s-treasury"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21146","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21146"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21146\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21147"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21146"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21146"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21146"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}