Vladimir Putin signed two measures on August 4, 2026, that pointed in opposite directions. One released the bank deposits of foreign nationals, frozen since June under an order that swept citizens of countries Moscow calls unfriendly into blocked accounts they could not touch. The other cut off Russians abroad who have been convicted in their absence, freezing their assets, blocking property transactions, and barring consulates from issuing them new passports.
The people caught by the second measure are not fugitives from fraud inquiries. Convictions handed down in absentia, without the defendant present to answer, cover offenses including discrediting the armed forces and taking part in banned organizations, and Russia’s justice ministry decides who goes on the register.
The decision amounted to a practical denial of citizenship without due process.
This is the question this article asks. Nothing here helps anyone escape a court that has properly heard him, and any bank in any country named below will open a client’s file when a real investigation arrives through the proper channel.
The concern is a different and far more common one: what a government can do to a citizen’s money because of who he is, rather than what has been proven against him.
Why This Stopped Being a Fringe Concern
Frozen bank accounts are no longer the preserve of oligarchs and sanctioned officials, and aren’t exclusive to Russia or non-Western countries; three recent episodes show how commonplace the exposure has become.
🇨🇦 Canadian financial institutions froze 206 accounts holding roughly C$7.8 million during the 2022 convoy protests, acting on police lists rather than court orders.
A federal judge found the emergency declaration unlawful in 2024, and the Federal Court of Appeal upheld that finding in January. Ottawa has asked the Supreme Court of Canada to look at the case again, and the court had not said whether it would as of early August.
🇨🇾 Cyprus went further in 2013, locking its entire banking system and imposing losses on balances above €100,000. The people hit hardest were Cypriots.
🇩🇪 Germany shows the third and quietest version, in which no government order exists at all. Deutsche Welle reported in May that several German banks had suspended accounts belonging to Russian and Belarusian nationals, some without warning, and demanded proof of a current residence permit before restoring access.
None of this had to happen. Brussels has made clear that its rules are not meant to affect Russians who live in Europe or hold European citizenship, and the sanctions do not tell banks to block anyone. But because banks face big fines if they make a mistake, they now often go further than the rules require.
Germany’s federal anti-discrimination agency concluded that nationality is not a protected characteristic under German equal-treatment law, so none of this counts as discrimination, and the agency’s practical advice to affected customers was to change banks.
Secrecy is the Wrong Thing to Shop For
More than 100 jurisdictions now automatically exchange account data once a year, and every offshore center with a reputation for discretion is part of that system. Switzerland’s federal tax authority reported exchanging with 110 partner jurisdictions in its most recent cycle, sending data on roughly 3.8 million accounts.
A home tax authority, therefore, already knows the account exists. Buying confidentiality in 2026 means buying something that has mostly stopped being sold.
Paul Anthony Correa of Fiduciary Wealth Management, who advises from Gibraltar, draws the same line between reporting and access: the strong jurisdictions participate fully in the Common Reporting Standard, so it would be wrong to say no automatic disclosure takes place. “Quite another thing is third countries embarking on a fishing expedition to test the waters and gather data on an individual on a purely speculative basis.”
What still varies is the route an authority has to take when it wants something. In some countries, a foreign request must be turned into a domestic court order before it touches an account, which takes time, leaves a record, and can be contested.
Elsewhere, an administrative instruction does the work, and the account holder learns of it after the fact (i.e. after their accounts are seized or frozen).
The Safest Banking Jurisdictions
🇸🇬 Singapore treats disclosure of customer information as a criminal offense for the bank and its staff, permitted only in a short list of defined situations. A judgment or order issued abroad has no force on its own; it must first be converted into a Singapore order under the supervision of a Singapore court.
Legitimate foreign prosecutions still get cooperation, and account data still goes to foreign tax authorities, so what Singapore offers is protection against arbitrary action rather than against consequences.
“Singapore isn’t a wall,” says Enis Sljivo of Ancova Capital. “If there’s a legitimate claim, it can still get through, but it isn’t automatic. It has to go through the Singapore courts first. For clients who are worried about a politically motivated or questionable action back home, that extra step can make a very real difference.”
🇨🇭 Switzerland’s bank secrecy covers anyone who learns client information through a bank, including outside auditors and administrators, and the duty stays in place after they leave the job. Foreign investigators cannot simply call up and ask. They must file a formal legal assistance request, a court process the account holder can see and fight.
Automatic tax reporting has been in place since 2018 and now covers 84 countries on a two-way basis, with a further group receiving nothing at all because they fail Swiss data security standards. Russia is one of the countries to which Switzerland does not send data to.
🇱🇮 Liechtenstein applies the same principle with a shorter list of exceptions, and adds a wrinkle that is frequently oversold. Because it never joined the European system for enforcing court judgments across borders, a German or French civil ruling has to be argued again before a Liechtenstein judge.
🇺🇾 Uruguay has long been the answer for people seeking distance from both Washington and Brussels, with confidentiality that only a criminal court can lift. However, half of that changed in January.
A new national budget gave the tax authority power to pull account information through the central bank without going to a judge first, including at the substantiated request of a foreign authority.
Criminal matters still require a court; tax matters no longer do. Uruguay remains a real hedge against European and American political risk, but it is not the jurisdiction it was 18 months ago.
What Actually Helps in Practice
The single most useful step is holding accounts in two places that do not answer to the same authority. Two European banks are one jurisdiction wearing two logos, while Singapore alongside Switzerland, or either alongside Uruguay, means no single capital reaches both with one decision.
Residence matters more than the account, and it is where many people spend too little effort. When banks trim their client lists, non-residents go first, since they are the easiest to cut and the hardest to justify keeping. Holding a residence permit puts you in a different category: you have the rights of a resident, and dropping your account is no longer a simple decision for the bank.
Three to six months of living costs should sit physically where a person actually lives. Cross-border transfers fail at exactly the moment they are needed, whether from a freeze at either end, a payment outage, or closed airspace.
Most accounts frozen for review stay frozen because the holder cannot produce sale agreements, tax returns, and employment records quickly, not because anyone concluded he had done anything wrong.
The uncomfortable finding, for most people who run the exercise honestly, is that the bank was never the weakest point. One passport, one tax residence, and one government holding everything is the actual exposure.
Curious about how a personal exposure profile looks? IMI’s Sovereign Score measures dependence on a single government for banking, residence, and documents.
