From the federal assizes to a court in Bellinzona

Federal criminal justice before 2004

For most of its history the Swiss federal State left criminal justice to the cantons. The Federal Constitution of 1848 created a Federal Tribunal whose judges served part-time on the militia principle and whose first organization act entered into force in 1849. Its limited criminal jurisdiction was exercised above all through federal assizes, in which juries decided cases of high treason, revolt and violence against the federal authorities and political offences.¹ The Federal Constitution of 1874 kept this model. The Federal Act on Federal Criminal Procedure of 15 June 1934 (BStP) regulated the proceedings of the Federal Criminal Court, which until 2003 was not an independent court but a chamber of the Federal Tribunal in Lausanne. It sat wherever the case required. Chapter D.I described one of its most famous Ticino trials, which it held in Lugano in November 1930 against the pilot Giovanni Bassanesi and the organizers of the antifascist leaflet flight over Milan, acquitting all defendants except Bassanesi.² The federal assizes, which required the mobilization of a jury, met only twice in the twentieth century: in 1927, after an attack on the Hungarian prime minister István Bethlen at the League of Nations in Geneva, and in 1933, after the Geneva riots of 1932. Because the Federal Constitution of 1999 no longer provided for them, they were abolished with effect from 1 March 2000.³

The Office of the Attorney General of Switzerland, the federal prosecution service, was for a long time mainly a political police and state security authority. Its investigations concentrated on espionage, political extremism and offences against the Confederation, while ordinary crime, including complex fraud and money laundering, was investigated by the cantonal examining magistrates and tried by cantonal courts. Its state security role became a public scandal in November 1989, when a parliamentary commission of inquiry examining the Federal Department of Justice and Police and the federal prosecution service revealed that some 900,000 state security files had been kept since 1900, a discovery that led to a reorganization of the office.⁴ For a financial centre this division of labour had a clear consequence. Cases of international economic crime were handled by the prosecutors of Geneva, Zurich, Lugano and a few other cantons, whose resources, languages and experience varied considerably. Chapter D.IV described the work of the Ticino prosecutors in the 1980s, among them Carla Del Ponte in Lugano, who made the canton a centre of the fight against money laundering with the instruments of cantonal procedure. The weakness of the system lay in the cases that crossed cantonal and national borders. Nobody had clear responsibility for them, and conflicts of jurisdiction between cantons could delay proceedings for years.

Notes

1. Wikipedia, "Schweizerisches Bundesgericht", https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schweizerisches_Bundesgericht (militia judges; first organization act of 1849; criminal proceedings with juries as federal assizes), and "Geschworenengericht", section on Switzerland, https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geschworenengericht (offences assigned to the federal assizes), both consulted as a last resort. ↩
2. See Chapter D.I. The judgment of 22 November 1930 sentenced Bassanesi to four months' imprisonment and a fine for violating the federal decrees on air navigation. ↩
3. Wikipedia, "Geschworenengericht", section on Switzerland, https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geschworenengericht (consulted as a last resort): the federal assizes met only twice in the twentieth century (1927 and 1933) and were abolished with effect from 1 March 2000. Federal Act on Federal Criminal Procedure of 15 June 1934 (BStP), formerly SR 312.0, repealed on 1 January 2011 by the CrimPC. ↩
4. Wikipedia, "Fichenskandal", https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fichenskandal (parliamentary commission of inquiry into the Federal Department of Justice and Police and the federal prosecution service; report of November 1989; some 900,000 state security files kept between 1900 and 1990), and "Bundesanwaltschaft (Schweiz)", https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bundesanwaltschaft_(Schweiz) (reorganization after the scandal), both consulted as a last resort. ↩

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 October 2026.