Mark Pieth: ‘Switzerland muddles on with sanctions’

Trade in Russian oil and gas is shifting from commodity trading hub Geneva to Dubai and Singapore, says anti-corruption expert Mark Pieth. But this is not the outcome of greater efforts to implement sanctions against Russia by Swiss supervisory authorities. Pieth explains why the economic fight against Moscow is fizzling out. SWI swissinfo.ch: The sanctions against Russia have not yielded lasting results. That's not an anomaly, but you also consider it a political failure on the part of the West. Why is that? Mark Pieth: There are only a few cases in history where sanctions have worked. The sanctions against [former dictator of Iraq] Saddam Hussein are one example. But here, too, an exception had to be made and oil had to be exchanged for food because they didn't want to harm the Iraqi population. By comparison, a country the size of Russia has a multitude of workarounds. And the West has made mistakes. It underestimated how dependent it was on Russian oil and gas. Germany could ...