The 25 wealthiest Swiss billionaires

The 25 wealthiest Swiss billionaires

Tue, May 16th 2023

Switzerland has the highest concentration of billionaires in the world. This week, CEO World published its annual list of the 25 richest billionaires in Switzerland.
The Oberhofen Castle was owned by wealthy Swiss families up until the 1950s when it became part of the Historical Museum of Bern.

Switzerland has the highest concentration of billionaires in the world, with at least 25 residents who are worth more than $2.5 billion.

This week, CEO World published their annual list of the “Wealthiest People in Switzerland.” While celebrities like Tina Turner and Shania Twain call Switzerland home, you won’t find them on this list. At the top sits the Aponte family, the owners of the controversial Mediterranean Shipping Company (MSC) based in Geneva.

Gianluigi Aponte (center), and his children Diego (left) and Alexa (right) in a photo from 2019.

The wealthy family has earned its billions running one of the largest shipping companies in the world. And while the pandemic increased the family’s wealth vastly, it wasn’t the frequency of ships that have Swiss media twittering. It’s what was on – or rather, what wasn’t supposed to be on – the MSC ships that has drug trafficking police investigating MSC.

Read more: The Swiss company at the center of a drug trafficking storm

Meanwhile, let’s take a look at the rest of the list of billionaires living in Switzerland:

  • Rafaela Aponte-Diamant: $31.3 billion
  • Gianluigi Aponte: $31.3 billion
  • Ernesto Bertarelli: $9.5 billion
  • Ivan Glasenberg: $8.6 billion
  • Guillaume Pousaz: $7.2 billion
  • Magdalena Martullo-Blocher: $7.0 billion
  • Rahel Blocher: $7.0 billion
  • Thomas Schmidheiny: $5.9 billion
  • Thomas Straumann: $5.7 billion
  • Michael Pieper: $5.6 billion
  • Rudolf Maag: $5.6 billion
  • Hansjoerg Wyss: $5.2 billion
  • Martin Haefner: $5.1 billion
  • Dona Bertarelli: $5.1 billion
  • Peter Grogg: $4.9 billion
  • Peter Spuhler: $4.3 billion
  • Margarita Louis-Dreyfus & family: $3.5 billion
  • Hans Peter Wild: $3.4 billion
  • Maja Oeri: $3.4 billion
  • Walter Frey: $3.4 billion
  • Martin Ebner: $3.2 billion
  • Markus Blocher: $3.1 billion
  • Willy Michel: $3.1 billion
  • Eva Maria Bucher-Haefner: $3.0 billion
  • Matthias Reinhart: $2.7 billion
Swiss neutrality
Switzerland’s private banking secrecy laws are another big draw for billionaires to settle in the country.

One name you will not see on this year’s list is wine merchant Pierre Castel, once considered the 12th richest person in Switzerland. Last year a Geneva court ordered Castel to pay CHF410 million in back taxes.

Castel, who is originally from France, built the Castel Group with his siblings – comprised of 215 different companies in 40 countries. Castel has lived in Switzerland since 1981 and has failed to report for more than 30 years his dividends through a Liechtenstein foundation and another in Singapore.

Moreover, the 96-year-old registered with the tax authorities under his middle name, Jésus, which helped him sidestep many fees. It was only when local media figured out the ruse, that the authorities were alerted. The billionaire is being asked to pay back the sum in total (he has an estimated worth is 13 to 14 billion Swiss francs) it would wipe out Geneva’s cantonal deficit.

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