31 October 2017 – We managed to successfully enforce a foreign (Greek) freezing order (with a nominal amount of EUR 260 million) in Switzerland under the Lugano Convention by way of a Swiss freezing order.

The Greek order had been rendered in the context of the asset recovery proceedings initiated by our client, a bank, against one of its former top managers who was charged in Greece with embezzling more than 700 million Euros by granting unsecured loans to companies related to him. We managed to enforce the Greek freezing order simultaneously in Zurich, Lugano and Geneva against various counter-parties. Their objections (in particular against our attempt to pierce the corporate veil of some of the formal account holders) were rejected by the competent Zurich courts and their rulings were finally confirmed by a landmark decision of the Swiss Federal Supreme Court in November 2017.