From transit trade to trade finance: Chiasso, customs law and modern logistics

The end of the old transit order

The transit economy described in this chapter ended in three steps. The revolution of 1798 and the Helvetic Republic abolished the bailiwicks and many of the privileges on which the carriers' associations and the local tolls rested. The Federal Constitution of 1848 made customs a federal matter, empowered the Confederation to abolish internal tolls and road and bridge money against compensation to the cantons and created a single Swiss customs territory with a single external tariff. The cantons were fully compensated for the abolition of their internal tolls, which mattered in Ticino, where customs revenues had been by far the largest item of state income since the canton was created in 1803.¹ The opening of the carriage road over the Gotthard in 1830 and of the Gotthard railway in 1882 replaced the pack-animal trade with wagons and then with trains, which carried in a day what the mule trains had carried in a year (Chapter C.III). The Sust at Flüelen, the Dazio Grande at Rodi and the warehouses of Magadino lost their function. The valleys of the Leventina lost the income that the carrying trade had given them. Many of their inhabitants emigrated.

The geography of transit changed with the railway. The goods no longer changed hands at every stage of the road, but they still had to cross a customs border between Switzerland and Italy. The point at which that happened, for the Gotthard line, was Chiasso. The Chiasso–Lugano line was inaugurated in 1874 and the line to Como in 1876. The international station of Chiasso became the place where trains were split, goods declared, duties paid and consignments forwarded.² The Comune di Chiasso marked the 150th anniversary of its international station in 2024.³

Chiasso: a customs town becomes a banking town

Chiasso grew from a village into a town on the strength of the customs border. The station and the customs offices employed railway workers, customs officers and border guards, and around them grew a business of forwarding agents and customs brokers (spedizionieri and agenti doganali) who prepared declarations, advanced duties, stored goods and organized onward carriage for importers and exporters on both sides. A free port (punto franco), in operation from 1925, allowed goods to be stored at the border without being cleared.⁴ The forwarders of Chiasso were the direct successors of the spedizionieri of the Gotthard route. They performed the same combination of logistical, fiscal and financial services: they carried goods, paid the charges and extended credit to their clients until the goods were sold.

From the 1950s the proximity of the border made Chiasso a banking town as well. Italian savers who wanted to move money into Switzerland found in Chiasso the first Swiss town beyond the frontier, and banks opened branches there to receive the cash that couriers brought across (Chapter D.II). The Chiasso branch of Credit Suisse, whose managers had channelled Italian funds through the Liechtenstein shell company Texon without the knowledge of the bank's management, was the most prominent of these offices. The affair broke in the spring of 1977, and on 24 April 1977 the branch manager and two other directors were arrested. The scandal led to the first Swiss code of conduct on banking due diligence (Chapter D.III).⁵ After the 1980s, the gradual end of Italian currency controls, the automation of customs procedures and the consolidation of the Swiss banking sector reduced both the customs business and the banking business of Chiasso. The town retains the main customs office for the southern border, the Chiasso–Brogeda motorway crossing and the rail freight terminals. The logistics and distribution companies of the Mendrisiotto (Chapter F.III) depend on this infrastructure.

Notes

1. Federal Constitution of 12 September 1848, Art. 23–24, in Bundesblatt 1849 (as above); HLS, art. "Zölle" (as above): "für die Aufhebung der Binnenzölle wurden die Kantone vollumfänglich entschädigt"; Italian version, art. "Dogane" (as above): "nel neocostituito cant. Ticino (1803), fino al 1848 i proventi doganali costituirono di gran lunga la voce più importante delle entrate statali". See Chapter C.I. ↩
2. HLS, art. "Chiasso" (Stefania Bianchi), https://hls-dhs-dss.ch/it/articles/002230/: "Nel 1874 venne inaugurata la linea C.-Lugano, nel 1876 quella per Como". The station opened on 6 December 1874 according to Wikipedia, "Chiasso railway station", https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chiasso_railway_station (consulted as a last resort). ↩
3. Comune di Chiasso, "150° Stazione Internazionale di Chiasso", https://www.chiasso.ch/150-stazione-internazionale-di-chiasso/. The anniversary year follows from the opening of the station in 1874. ↩
4. HLS, art. "Chiasso" (Stefania Bianchi, version of 30.06.2022), https://hls-dhs-dss.ch/it/articles/002230/, on the rise "di case di spedizione" and of the border trade, on the punto franco "attivo dal 1925" and on Chiasso's role "di piazza finanziaria e di capoluogo economico del distr.". ↩
5. HLS, art. "Crédit suisse" (Jan-Henning Baumann, version of 27.11.2012), https://hls-dhs-dss.ch/fr/articles/041821/2012-11-27/, on the Chiasso scandal revealed in 1977 and a loss of about CHF 1.4 billion ("une perte de quelque 1,4 milliard de francs"); Wikipedia, "Chiasso scandal", https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chiasso_scandal (consulted as a last resort), on Texon as "a Liechtenstein shell company" used without the knowledge of the bank's management, on the arrests of 24 April 1977 and on the signing in 1977 of the "Agreement on the Swiss banks' code of conduct with regard to the exercise of due diligence". See Chapter D.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 October 2026.