SWITZERLAND Trends and Developments Contributed by: Philippe M. Reich, Kaspar Projer, Samantha Salsench and Anna Zellweger, Baker McKenzie Switzerland AG
dered by SECO were obtained through a Freedom of Public Information Act request lodged with SECO. All decisions, of which at least 28 were published, were rendered following violations of the Ukraine Ordinance and the Belarus Ordinance. Moreover, the Report of the Office of the Attorney General of Switzerland of April 2025 on its activities in 2024 mentions two cases that it took over at SECO’s request and which are related to the Swiss sanctions against Russia. The latest Report of the Office of the Attorney General of Switzerland of April 2026 on its activities in 2025, in contrast, does not mention proceedings concerning Switzerland’s sanctions against Russia specifically. Based on this, the following patterns have become apparent. First and foremost, in almost all decisions reviewed, SECO has held a legal person liable, although Swiss sanctions generally target the individual responsible for the violation, as the Embargo Act imposes an origi - nal and individual criminal liability. Moreover, due to the sole applicability of administrative criminal law to sanctions violations (cf. Article 12 paragraph 1 and Article 14 paragraph 1 EmbA), there is no original (or even subsidiary) criminal liability of companies (out - side of Article 102 paragraph 1 of the Swiss Criminal Code), with the following exception: According to Arti - cle 7 paragraph 1 of the Federal Act on Administrative Criminal Law (ACLA), a legal person (instead of the individual responsible for the sanctions violation) may be fined up to CHF5,000 in case (i) a criminal offence is committed by an enterprise; (ii) the fine in question does not exceed CHF5,000; and (iii) the investigation of the responsible individual would require dispropor - tionate investigative measures. In the majority of the decisions reviewed, SECO referred to Article 7 para - graph 1 ACLA and fined the legal person rather than the individual committing the sanctions violation. This approach is consistent with SECO’s tendency of the past few years to rely, whenever possible, on this exception in mainly non-serious and non-intentional cases. This allows SECO to issue a fine against a legal person for organisational compliance failure rather than issuing penalties against individuals. Usually, when launching a sanctions investigation, SECO will initially focus on the determination of the individual
responsible for the violation but then regularly switch its focus to organisational failures to ultimately estab - lish corporate criminal liability instead. Therefore, in all cases reviewed (with one exception), the fine issued against the legal person did not exceed CHF5,000, which is in line with the requirements imposed by Article 7 paragraph 1 ACLA. In addition to the fines, the legal persons were also charged con - siderable procedural costs in some cases. In practice, relevant transactions are usually brought to SECO’s attention by the Swiss customs authorities which scrutinise shipments into and out of Switzer - land and alert SECO of suspected sanctions viola - tions. Therefore, and not surprisingly, in almost all cases reviewed, an export or import of (restricted) goods was the cause for the respective investigation and the subsequent issuance of fines. With the Swiss sanctions framework expanding on a regular basis and SECO’s announcement to not only target the flows of goods out of Switzerland, but also attempts to circumvent Swiss sanctions by involving companies outside of western sanctions jurisdictions, it is expected that SECO’s activities around enforce - ment, in particular of Switzerland’s sanctions against Russia, will increase further. Such enforcement activi - ties may also focus on financial restrictions and the transfer of intellectual property out of Switzerland, rather than primarily on product-related (export and import) restrictions as has been the case so far. Ring-Fencing and Circumvention Further topics which have been widely discussed by Swiss legal scholars, practitioners and SECO itself, and are expected to gain even more importance, are (i) ring-fencing efforts by Swiss companies, as well as (ii) efforts by SECO to prevent circumvention of Swiss sanctions. Swiss sanctions laws do not provide for a definition of the term “ring-fencing”, which is commonly used in the context of the activities of Russian group entities (typically subsidiaries) of Swiss parent companies (or parent companies in western sanctions jurisdictions). Nevertheless, Swiss sanctions practitioners com - monly agree on the following definition of ring-fenc -
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