Five recurring themes

Trust and its history

Every Part of this book returned to trust, although the word meant different things in different centuries. In the bailiwicks it meant the confidence that a notarial instrument would be enforced although the judge had bought his office and would leave after two years (Chapter A.II). For the emigrant families of the lakes it meant the reliability of a fellow villager who carried coin across the Alps and of a notary who recorded the sale of a field for an absent owner (Chapter A.III). In the Catholic economy of the parishes it was the discretion of the confessor and the supervised administration of endowments (Chapter B.III). The Swiss Criminal Code still protects the secrets of clergy, lawyers and notaries in a single provision, Article 321, which Chapter B.III read as a distant heir of that culture.¹

The modern history of trust in Lugano is a history of its institutionalization. The crash of 1914 destroyed confidence in local banks tied to parties and notables. The canton answered with a bank whose liabilities the State guarantees without limit, and the Confederation answered later with deposit insurance and banking supervision (Chapter C.IV). The Chiasso scandal of 1977 destroyed the assumption that a large bank knew what its branches did, and the answer was the due diligence agreement, which turned the identity of the client from a matter of discretion into a matter of documentation (Chapter D.III). The BSI case of 2016 showed that even the largest Ticinese bank could lose its existence through failures of compliance, after FINMA found serious breaches of anti-money laundering rules in connection with the 1MDB fund.² Each crisis transferred trust from persons to institutions and rules. The relationship manager who knows his clients personally remains the core of the Lugano model, but his personal knowledge now operates inside forms, registers and audit trails.

The border as resource and as risk

The border appears in every Part as the source of Lugano's business and of its dangers. Differences in prices, duties and monopolies made smuggling a structural feature of the transit economy (Chapter A.IV). After 1945 the same paths carried cigarettes, coffee and rice southwards and banknotes northwards. The spallone, the smuggler who carried his load on his back in a woven basket, became the symbol of a business in which the Swiss bank treated foreign exchange control as a matter for the foreign State.³ In the 1980s the channels that carried Italian savings also carried the proceeds of heroin trafficking and Mafia extortion (Chapter D.IV). Today the official threat assessments describe the 'Ndrangheta as the Italian Mafia organization most deeply rooted in Switzerland, and the MROS identified Ticino as a regional hotspot in 2025.⁴

The border is equally a resource in lawful business. It supplies a labour market of about 79,000 cross-border commuters, a client base an hour from Milan and a logistics belt through which, as Chapter F.III recorded, about 500,000 trucks cross at Chiasso- Brogeda every year. The difference between two legal and tax systems is what allows Lugano to offer something that Milan cannot. Swiss law, Swiss courts, the Swiss franc and Swiss institutions are available within commuting distance of Italy's richest region. The risk lies in the temptation to exploit the difference where the law of one side forbids it. The Kering settlement of 2019, the Italian proceedings against Swiss banks and bankers between 2016 and 2020 and the sanctions cases of the Luganese steel trade show that the other side's law now reaches across the line (Chapters E.IV, F.III and G.II).

Notes

1. SCC, SR 311.0, Art. 321 paras 1 and 2 (professional secrecy of clergy, lawyers, notaries and other professionals), English translation as reproduced by lawbrary.ch (version 2025.01), https://lawbrary.ch/law/art/STGB-v2025.01-en-art-321/print, as cited in Chapter B.III. ↩
2. FINMA, "FINMA takes action against BSI in 1MDB case" (above). See Chapter E.I on the integration into EFG International in 2017. ↩
3. tio.ch, "Denaro, euro e informazioni: la Svizzera e gli spalloni", https://www.tio.ch/svizzera/attualita/1532020/denaro-euro-informazioni-svizzera-spalloni-rotte, quoting the Treccani definition ("colui che porta a spalla il carico di contrabbando"); BAZG, Benvenuti al Confine. Il Museo delle Dogane Svizzero (brochure, April 2017), https://www.bazg.admin.ch/dam/it/sd-web/KYDqZH4XOhDY/broschuere-schweizer-zollmuseum_it.pdf. See Chapter D.II. ↩
4. MROS, Annual Report 2025 (above). On fedpol's threat picture and the regional hotspot see Chapter G.III. ↩

For general information only. This article does not constitute legal or tax advice, does not replace advice on an individual case and creates no lawyer-client relationship. It reflects the legal position as of August 2025.