The criminal proceedings and the trial of 1979

The investigation

The criminal investigation lay with the public prosecutor's office of the Sottoceneri in Lugano. Paolo Bernasconi, the prosecutor in charge, had to reconstruct sixteen years of transactions conducted through a Liechtenstein entity, with documents spread between Chiasso, Zurich, Vaduz and the Italian borrowers. The investigation lasted twenty-six months, and the trial that followed took five weeks. It had to answer questions that Swiss criminal law had rarely posed in a banking case of this size: whether the bank officers had acted within or outside their authority, whether the guarantees issued in the bank's name were valid acts of the bank or unauthorized acts of its employees, and whether the bank itself had been damaged or had merely been exposed to risks that it would have accepted had it known of them.¹ The legal framework determined what could be prosecuted. The export of capital in breach of Italian currency law was not an offence in Switzerland. Neither was the evasion of Italian taxes, since Swiss law did not punish the evasion of foreign taxes and Swiss mutual assistance in tax matters was limited to tax fraud in the narrow sense. The Federal Act on International Mutual Assistance in Criminal Matters, which would regulate cooperation with foreign prosecutors, was adopted only on 20 March 1981, and even that Act excludes assistance for offences aimed at reducing taxes or violating currency regulations, save for tax fraud.² The prosecution therefore concentrated on the damage done to the Kreditanstalt itself. The central charge was unfaithful management (amministrazione infedele) under Article 159 of the Swiss Criminal Code then in force, the offence that the present Article 158 describes as the conduct of a person entrusted with managing the property of another who, in breach of his duties, causes or permits a financial loss to that person.³

The trial in Chiasso, June 1979

By June 1979 the case was being heard by the Ticino Court of Assizes (Corte delle assise criminali), the cantonal court for the most serious criminal cases. Because of the number of parties and the public interest, the hearings were held in the chamber of the municipal council, which was transformed into a courtroom for the purpose.⁴ The defendants included Kuhrmeier, Laffranchi and two lawyers who had acted for Texon. The proceedings were followed closely by the Swiss and Italian press. The correspondent of the Italian Communist daily l'Unità described a trial that revealed "an unknown Switzerland" and reported Kuhrmeier's statement that he alone had made the error.⁵

Whether he had indeed acted alone was the political question of the trial. A former vice-director of the branch testified that the head office in Zurich had known everything but had had no interest in intervening.⁶ The defence had an interest in spreading responsibility, while the prosecution needed to establish the individual guilt of the accused. Bernasconi's conclusion, as summarized in a later cantonal account, was that the evidence did not show direct responsibility on the part of the Kreditanstalt's top management, although he criticized the negligence of its controls.⁷ This assessment matched that of the Federal Banking Commission, which found failures of control but no knowledge of the scheme at the level of the general management.

Notes

1. "Chiasso retour", Der Höngger, 13 July 1979 (below) ("26 Monate hat die Untersuchung gedauert, fünf Wochen der straff geführte Prozess"); Ente Ticinese per il Turismo (above) for Bernasconi's role. The questions listed are the author's summary of the legal issues reported in the press. ↩
2. Federal Act on International Mutual Assistance in Criminal Matters of 20 March 1981 (IMAC), SR 351.1, Art. 3(3), https://www.droit-bilingue.ch/en-de/3/35/351.1-3-7.html ("A request shall not be granted if the subject of the proceedings is an offence which appears to be aimed at reducing fiscal duties or taxes or which violates regulations on currency, trade or economic measures"). The Federal Councillor Georges-André Chevallaz announced a new law on mutual assistance in the National Council debate of 22 June 1977, as reported in La Liberté, 22/23 June 1977 (above). ↩
3. Swiss Criminal Code of 21 December 1937 (SCC), SR 311.0, Art. 158(1), https://www.droit-bilingue.ch/en-de/3/31/311.0-158-194.html. ↩
4. Pizzigoni, l'Unità, 4 June 1979 (above) ("La sala del Consiglio comunale, trasformata eccezionalmente in aula del tribunale"). SWI swissinfo.ch, "La grande leçon du scandale Texon" (above), names the Ticino Court of Assizes as the trial court. ↩
5. Pizzigoni, l'Unità, 4 June 1979 (above) ("una Svizzera inedita"). ↩
6. Pizzigoni, l'Unità, 4 June 1979 (above). The OCR text of the archive copy renders the witness's name in a garbled form. ↩
7. Ente Ticinese per il Turismo, "Lo 'scandalo' di Chiasso" (above): "Il procuratore pubblico Paolo Bernasconi non rilevò responsabilità dirette da parte dei vertici del Credito Svizzero ma non omise di criticarne la negligenza nei controlli." ↩

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.