The cross-border dimension

Economic crime without borders

Almost every significant economic crime case in Zurich has a foreign element. The predicate offence may have been committed abroad, the victims may live in another country, the offender may have left Switzerland, or the evidence may be held on servers in another jurisdiction. Swiss criminal law responds to the first of these situations with a broad jurisdictional reach. Under Article 305bis paragraph 3 SCC, money laundering in Switzerland is punishable even where the predicate offence was committed abroad, provided it is also punishable at the place of commission.¹ The Zurich banker who accepts the proceeds of a Brazilian bribery scheme or an Uzbek extortion network therefore commits an offence in Switzerland, so that the assets can be seized and confiscated in Zurich, even if no Brazilian or Uzbek court has ever convicted anyone.

The Swiss cases of the last decade show how dependent the domestic prosecution of such offences is on foreign cooperation. In the Safra Sarasin case, the OAG reported that obtaining access to the e-mail data of the accused had delayed the investigation by about five and a half years.² In the Karimova case, the Federal Criminal Court travelled to Tashkent to question the principal accused, who was detained in Uzbekistan and could not be brought to Bellinzona. The limitation period ultimately prevented a judgment against her. Mutual legal assistance, both incoming and outgoing, is thus an integral part of economic crime prosecution. Its legal framework, including the Federal Act on International Mutual Assistance in Criminal Matters, the special rules for assets of politically exposed persons and the exchange of tax information, is treated in chapter I.V.

Parallel proceedings and global resolutions

For multinational companies and banks, the most demanding cross-border problem is the coordination of parallel proceedings. A single set of facts, such as bribes paid through a Zurich account to an official in Africa, may give rise to proceedings by the OAG, by the US Department of Justice and Securities and Exchange Commission, by the Serious Fraud Office, by the French Parquet national financier and by authorities in the country where the bribes were paid. Each authority applies its own law and its own sanctions while seeking access to the same documents and witnesses. The principle ne bis in idem offers limited protection across jurisdictions, since it applies in principle only within the legal order of each state.

The Credit Suisse Mozambique affair, in which FINMA coordinated its proceedings with authorities in London and Washington, and the Glencore case, in which the company had settled with the Congolese government before receiving the Swiss summary penalty order, show that global resolutions are possible.³ They require early coordination among counsel in several jurisdictions and a Swiss strategy that takes into account the absence of a DPA mechanism. The trilateral alliance of the OAG with the Serious Fraud Office and the Parquet national financier, announced in March 2025, is likely to increase the number of cases in which Swiss and foreign authorities act in a coordinated manner.

A particular problem arises when foreign authorities ask a Swiss company to produce documents or witnesses directly, without passing through the channels of mutual legal assistance. Article 271 SCC prohibits the performance of acts on behalf of a foreign state on Swiss territory without authorisation, and Article 273 SCC protects business secrets against disclosure to foreign authorities. Companies that cooperate with foreign prosecutors in the course of internal investigations must therefore structure the transfer of information carefully, often with the involvement of the Federal Office of Justice or through authorisations from the competent federal department. The practice has developed considerably since the US tax programme for Swiss banks of 2013, described in Part G, which required a large-scale transfer of employee and client data under special authorisations.⁴

Sanctions, crypto-assets and new forms of cross-border crime

Two recent developments have added new cross-border dimensions to economic crime in Zurich. The first concerns sanctions. Since 2022, violations of the Swiss sanctions against Russia have become a major field of criminal enforcement, which is primarily a matter for the State Secretariat for Economic Affairs and, in serious cases, for the OAG. The OAG reported provisional freezing orders of more than CHF 1.3 billion in connection with suspected violations.⁵ The Zurich case of MBaer Merchant Bank, whose licence FINMA withdrew in February 2026 after finding serious systemic deficiencies in its anti-money laundering due diligence, including transactions for clients connected with the sanctions against Russia, shows how supervisory, sanctions and criminal issues intersect.⁶ Chapter I.IV discusses the sanctions regime in detail.

The second development concerns crypto-assets. The bitcoin mixing service closed down by the Zurich prosecutors illustrates how cross-border crime uses the infrastructure of digital assets. The victims of ransomware, investment fraud and business email compromise are scattered across the world, while the service providers who transmit and convert the assets may be located in Zurich, Zug or abroad. The prosecution of such cases requires cooperation with foreign police and prosecutors through Europol, Interpol and bilateral channels, as well as the technical capacity to follow assets across blockchains. FINMA’s supervisory statistics reflect the same trend. In 2025 FINMA opened about 450 preliminary investigations into potentially unauthorised companies and persons and added more than 300 entries to its warning list, a record number, while concluding 55 enforcement proceedings, compared with 38 in 2024.⁷ A substantial part of these unauthorised providers operate online and from abroad, targeting Swiss investors with the promise of trading platforms and crypto investments. Where FINMA finds indications of criminal conduct, it notifies the prosecution authorities under Article 38 FINMASA.

Notes

1. SCC, Art. 305bis para. 3, https://www.droit-bilingue.ch/de-en/3/31/311.0-305bis-372.html. ↩
2. OAG, press release on Bank J. Safra Sarasin AG, 22 August 2025 (cited above). ↩
3. swissinfo.ch on Glencore, 5 August 2024 (cited above), which notes that Glencore had reached a settlement of USD 180 million with the Democratic Republic of the Congo in 2022. ↩
4. Federal Department of Finance, “Wegleitung zur schweizerischen Musterverfügung vom 3. Juli 2013”, https://www.newsd.admin.ch/newsd/message/attachments/31820.pdf: the model authorisation under Art. 271 SCC allowed Swiss banks to cooperate with the US Department of Justice, including the transmission of personal data of current and former employees who had managed the relationships concerned, subject to prior agreement with the staff associations. Part G of this book treats the programme in detail. ↩
5. OAG, Tätigkeitsbericht 2024 (cited above). ↩
6. Wikipedia (English), “MBaer Merchant Bank”, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MBaer_Merchant_Bank, consulted for orientation. The article states that FINMA opened enforcement proceedings in 2024 and revoked the banking licence on 27 February 2026, ordering the bank into liquidation. ↩
7. swissinfo.ch, “Finma schliesst 2025 deutlich mehr Verfahren ab”, 21 April 2026, https://www.swissinfo.ch/ger/finma-schliesst-2025-deutlich-mehr-verfahren-ab/91289376. ↩

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.