Private asset recovery from Zurich

The absence of common law discovery

Victims of fraud, liquidators and judgment creditors who suspect assets in Zurich face a legal system that has no equivalent of the English Norwich Pharmacal order, the Bankers Trust order or American pre-trial discovery. A Norwich Pharmacal order compels a third party who has become mixed up in wrongdoing, typically a bank, to disclose information that allows the victim to identify the wrongdoer or trace assets.¹ Swiss civil procedure knows only limited disclosure duties. A party must produce documents in the course of proceedings once the court has ordered it, and a claimant can request the precautionary taking of evidence before proceedings where there is a risk to the evidence or a legitimate interest. A general order against a bank to disclose information about the accounts of third parties does not exist. A practice guide on international fraud and asset tracing published in 2026 accordingly emphasises that Switzerland lacks common law discovery and that defendants cannot be compelled to disclose assets outside identified attachment orders.²

The criminal complaint as a tracing tool

For this reason the criminal complaint is the classic instrument of private asset recovery in Zurich. A victim who files a complaint for fraud, criminal mismanagement or money laundering and joins the proceedings as a private claimant gains the rights of a party. Among these is the right to inspect the file, usually after the first interview of the accused and the gathering of the main evidence, under Articles 101 and 107 of the Criminal Procedure Code. The prosecutor may order banks to produce documents and may freeze accounts with a view to later forfeiture or return to the victim. The practice guide cited above describes the criminal complaint as the primary tool, because it gives the victim access to the file and allows the prosecutor to issue freezing orders for the purpose of restitution.³

The strategy has limits. Zurich prosecutors are aware that criminal complaints are often filed primarily to obtain documents for civil or foreign proceedings. They may restrict access to the file to protect the interests of the accused or of third parties, and they may decline to open proceedings if the facts appear to be a purely civil dispute. The victim must also expect that the prosecution will take time and that his influence on its conduct is limited. In cases with a foreign dimension, the Zurich prosecutor will often coordinate with foreign authorities through mutual assistance, so that the private claimant indirectly benefits from the official channels described above.

Attachment under the Debt Enforcement and Bankruptcy Act

The civil counterpart to the criminal freeze is the attachment, or Arrest, under Article 271 of the Debt Enforcement and Bankruptcy Act. A creditor must show that he has a claim against the debtor, that assets of the debtor are located in Switzerland and that one of the statutory grounds for attachment applies. The most important ground for international cases is that the debtor does not live in Switzerland and the claim has a sufficient connection with Switzerland or is based on an enforceable title. After an attachment has been served, banks and other third parties must disclose the assets they hold for the debtor, since banking secrecy yields to the duty to cooperate in debt enforcement.⁴ The attachment operates in rem. It reaches only assets that the creditor has identified with sufficient precision, typically by naming the bank and, if possible, the branch. A “fishing” attachment directed at all banks in Zurich is not permitted. The requirement of specificity makes the information obtained through criminal proceedings or foreign discovery all the more valuable.

Foreign judgments from states party to the Lugano Convention are recognised and enforced in Switzerland in a simplified procedure, and attachment can be combined with the declaration of enforceability. Foreign freezing orders, such as English worldwide freezing injunctions, can under certain conditions be recognised as provisional measures under the Lugano Convention. The practice guide notes that Switzerland recognises foreign insolvency decrees and Mareva-type freezing orders, in the latter case initially without an inter partes hearing.⁵

Recognition of foreign insolvency proceedings

For foreign liquidators, the revision of the Private International Law Act that entered into force on 1 January 2019 was a considerable improvement. The reciprocity requirement for the recognition of foreign insolvency decrees was abolished, and decrees rendered in the state of the debtor’s centre of main interests may now be recognised in addition to those rendered at the debtor’s seat. The ancillary bankruptcy in Switzerland, previously mandatory after recognition, can be waived if there are no secured claims, no privileged claims of Swiss creditors and no claims of creditors of a Swiss branch. In that case the foreign administrator may exercise his powers in Switzerland, move assets abroad and conduct litigation, although he may not perform acts of sovereign authority.⁶ The reform has made Zurich more accessible to insolvency practitioners from the British Virgin Islands, the Cayman Islands or Singapore, who often need to recover assets that insolvent companies held at Swiss banks.

Discovery abroad for use in Switzerland

Since Swiss law provides no discovery, practitioners look abroad for information. The most powerful foreign tool is Section 1782 of Title 28 of the United States Code, which authorises American federal courts to order discovery from persons in the United States for use in proceedings before foreign tribunals. It has been used to obtain evidence from American banks, from foreign banks with a presence in the United States and from clearing houses for wire transfers.⁷ Since most international payments in US dollars pass through correspondent banks in New York, a claimant can often reconstruct the flow of funds into and out of Zurich accounts from American records and then use the results to obtain an attachment or support a criminal complaint in Zurich. English disclosure orders and similar orders in offshore jurisdictions serve a comparable function.

The reverse direction, the taking of evidence in Switzerland for foreign civil proceedings, is governed by the Hague Evidence Convention. Switzerland has made a declaration under Article 23 limiting the execution of letters of request for pre-trial discovery, and Article 271 of the Criminal Code requires authorisation for any evidence-gathering activity on Swiss territory on behalf of a foreign authority.⁸ A foreign court that wants a Zurich bank to produce documents must therefore go through the Swiss central authority, and the bank may produce only what the Swiss court orders.

Crypto-assets

The tracing of crypto-assets adds a new layer, which Part J of this book treats in detail. Blockchain analysis often makes it possible to follow transfers more precisely than in the traditional banking system, but the decisive step remains the identification of the person behind an address, usually at a regulated exchange or custodian. Swiss law has adapted to this. Since the Distributed Ledger Technology Act of 2021, Article 242a of the Debt Enforcement and Bankruptcy Act allows crypto-assets held by a bankrupt custodian to be segregated in favour of the entitled clients.⁹ Criminal authorities that seize crypto-assets must safeguard and value them during the proceedings, and they often need outside experts for that purpose.¹⁰ For the victim of an investment fraud involving crypto-assets, the sequence of tools remains the same as in the traditional case: blockchain tracing, a criminal complaint or an attachment directed at the identified custodian, and, where the assets have left Switzerland, cooperation with foreign authorities.

Notes

1. Norwich Pharmacal Co v Customs and Excise Commissioners [1974] AC 133 (House of Lords). Bankers Trust Co v Shapira [1980] 1 WLR 1274 (Court of Appeal) established the related order for disclosure of bank documents in tracing claims. ↩
2. Chambers and Partners, “International Fraud & Asset Tracing 2026 – Switzerland”, Global Practice Guides, https://practiceguides.chambers.com/practice-guides/international-fraud-asset-tracing-2026/switzerland. ↩
3. Chambers and Partners, “International Fraud & Asset Tracing 2026 – Switzerland”, https://practiceguides.chambers.com/practice-guides/international-fraud-asset-tracing-2026/switzerland, sections on criminal proceedings and access to the file. ↩
4. LALIVE, “Switzerland”, in Lexology Getting the Deal Through – Asset Recovery (2024), https://www.lalive.law/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/Switzerland.pdf, sections on attachment and the disclosure duties under Arts. 91 and 275 DEBA. ↩
5. Chambers and Partners, “International Fraud & Asset Tracing 2026 – Switzerland”, https://practiceguides.chambers.com/practice-guides/international-fraud-asset-tracing-2026/switzerland, section on recognition of foreign orders. ↩
6. Urs Boller and David Peter, “Cross-Border Insolvency in Switzerland: Amendments to the Law as of 1 January 2019”, MLL News Portal, 16 January 2019, https://www.mll-news.com/cross-border-insolvency-in-switzerland-amendments-to-the-law-as-of-1-january-2019/?lang=en. ↩
7. Milbank LLP, “28 U.S.C. § 1782: Powerful Tool in the US to Obtain Discovery for Use in Foreign Proceedings”, 23 May 2024, https://www.milbank.com/en/news/28-usc-1782-powerful-tool-in-the-us-to-obtain-discovery-for-use-in-foreign-proceedings.html. ↩
8. Federal Office of Justice, “International Mutual Legal Assistance in Civil Matters”, https://www.bj.admin.ch/bj/en/home/sicherheit/rechtshilfe/zivilsachen.html, last updated 12 February 2026. ↩
9. Chambers and Partners, “International Fraud & Asset Tracing 2026 – Switzerland”, https://practiceguides.chambers.com/practice-guides/international-fraud-asset-tracing-2026/switzerland, section on crypto-assets. ↩
10. LALIVE, “Switzerland”, in Lexology Getting the Deal Through – Asset Recovery (2024), https://www.lalive.law/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/Switzerland.pdf, section on the management of seized assets. ↩

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 September 2025.