The Board of Appeal and international mutual assistance

A single appeal court for mutual assistance

Since 2007 the Federal Criminal Court has been the principal court for international mutual assistance in criminal matters. Article 25(1) IMAC provides that first-instance rulings of cantonal and federal authorities are subject to appeal directly to the Board of Appeal of the Federal Criminal Court unless the Act provides otherwise. Article 80e(1) IMAC specifies that the ruling of the executing cantonal or federal authority concluding the mutual assistance proceedings may be appealed to the Board of Appeal together with the preceding interim rulings. Interim rulings may be challenged separately only if they cause immediate and irreparable prejudice through the seizure of assets or valuables or through the presence of persons involved in the foreign proceedings (Art. 80e(2) IMAC).¹ The Federal Office of Justice may itself appeal against rulings of cantonal authorities and against decisions of the Federal Criminal Court. The Board of Appeal is not bound by the parties' submissions (Art. 25(3) and (6) IMAC).²

The Board of Appeal is in most cases the last instance. An appeal to the Federal Supreme Court against its decisions on mutual assistance is admissible only in particularly important cases concerning extradition, seizure, the handover of objects or assets, or the transmission of information from the secret domain, and the time limit is ten days instead of the usual thirty.³ For banks, account holders and their lawyers in Lugano the Board of Appeal is therefore usually the court that decides whether bank documents are sent abroad and whether frozen assets are handed over. Chapter H.IV described its practice on Italian requests, including the rule that only the account holder, and not the beneficial owner or an authorized signatory, has standing to challenge the transmission of bank documents (Art. 80h IMAC), and a decision of 2023 that permitted the handover of property in St. Moritz to Italy on the basis of an Italian preventive confiscation order.

Volume and composition

The Board of Appeal decides between about 180 and 250 mutual assistance cases a year. In 2023 it decided 247 such cases, including 220 appeals and 20 cases of extradition detention.⁴ In 2025 it decided 248, of which 52 concerned extradition, 29 extradition detention and 167 other forms of assistance.⁵ Most cases end with the dismissal of the appeal or a decision not to enter into the merits. In 2025 half of all the Board's decisions were dismissals and almost a quarter were decisions of inadmissibility, while only 16 per cent of appeals were upheld in whole or in part.⁶ The figures confirm what practitioners know. Mutual assistance in Switzerland is granted in the great majority of cases. The Board of Appeal intervenes mainly where the executing authority has transmitted documents without a sufficient connection to the foreign investigation, has disregarded the fiscal reservation or has failed to respect the rights of the persons concerned.

Notes

1. IMAC, Art. 25(1) and Art. 80e(1) and (2) (above). ↩
2. IMAC, Art. 25(3) and (6) (above). ↩
3. BGG, Art. 84(1) and (2) and Art. 100(1) and (2)(b), https://www.droit-bilingue.ch/de-it/1/17/173.110-84-89.html and https://www.droit-bilingue.ch/de-it/1/17/173.110-100-106.html. ↩
4. Geschäftsbericht 2023 (above). ↩
5. Geschäftsbericht 2025 (above). ↩
6. Geschäftsbericht 2025 (above). The percentages refer to all decisions of the Board of Appeal, including criminal procedure. ↩

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.