SWITZERLAND Law and Practice Contributed by: Roman Huber, Cristina Ess and Lea Ruckstuhl, Kellerhals Carrard
tion on companies and points out instruments that can be used to prevent and actively combat corrupt behaviour. In addition, Transparency International has recently developed a series of documents and guides for companies. All those documents can be found on the Website of SECO. Furthermore, there are various international requirements that companies in Switzerland must take into account as guidelines, eg, the Good Practice Guidance on Internal Controls, Ethics and Compliance or the OECD Anti-Brib - ery Recommendation as well as the ICC Rules Swiss criminal law does not provide a legal basis for the appointment of a monitor. However, the financial market authority (FINMA) has the pos - sibility of appointing auditors or investigators in the event of a violation of financial market laws (in particular related to possible infraction to the AML obligations). on Combating Corruption 2023. 8.3 Compliance Monitorships
In September 2017, Switzerland was assessed by the OECD Working Group (referred to as Phase 4 country monitoring). The OECD Working Group detailed the specific achievements and challenges of Switzerland regarding bribery in international business transactions. As an exam - ple of positive progress, it outlined the rise in the number of prosecutions and the significant level of enforcement by the OAG. The OECD Working Group expressed its appre - ciation of the work of the MROS for its role in detecting cases of foreign bribery in connection with money laundering and the proactive policy on seizure and confiscation. The active involve - ment of Switzerland in mutual legal assistance and the measures taken to improve co-opera - tion (eg, proactive mutual legal assistance) also received a positive mention. Nevertheless, they expect Switzerland to improve its enforcement with regard to the brib - ery of foreign public officials. Furthermore, the OECD Working Group regrets that the AMLA does not apply to lawyers, notaries, accountants and auditors. This last point is to be remedied with the project on the transparency of legal entities, which is currently undergoing consul - tation. Specific amendments to the Lawyers Act and the AMLA are envisaged, whereby lawyers, fiduciaries and other advisers would also have to comply to a certain extent with the due dili - gence obligations based on the AMLA, even if they do not engage in classic financial intermedi - ary activities. The OECD Working Group made various rec - ommendations. In February 2021, the OECD Working Group published its Phase 4 two-year follow-up report on Switzerland, concluding that Switzerland has:
9. Assessment 9.1 Assessment of the Applicable Enforced Legislation
In 2000, Switzerland signed up to the OECD Convention on Combating Bribery of Foreign Public Officials and in 2006 to the Council of Europe’s Criminal Law Convention on Corrup - tion (see 1. Legal Framework ). Against this backdrop, Switzerland has revised the criminal provisions that relate to the bribing of foreign and domestic officials, as well as to bribery in the private sector.
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