Swiss Lawyers Won’t Face Duty to Flag Dirty Money: Minister

(Bloomberg) — Switzerland’s parliament is unlikely to adopt rules forcing lawyers to fight money laundering as many lawmakers are themselves attorneys, the country’s finance minister said.

“It’s very difficult because there are a lot of lawyers in parliament and they really don’t feel that they have anything to do with that,” Karin Keller-Sutter said on Thursday at a Bloomberg event in Zurich.

Her comments come as the Swiss parliament debates a draft law that would force companies to declare their real ownership and require lawyers to flag suspect transactions — or face criminal prosecution.

With Switzerland’s traditional bank secrecy now notionally a thing of the past, progressive lawmakers are targeting norms that critics say still facilitate the flow of dirty money in and out of the country.

Lawmakers have moved to split the additional requirements for legal professionals from the original bill supported by the Finance Ministry. This is seen as indicating that they are set to be dropped.

On Wednesday, the US placed two Swiss lawyers under sanctions for helping illegal money flow from Russia through shell companies. Washington has been pressuring Switzerland for months, with little success, to close a loophole that makes it straightforward to set up shell firms that facilitate sanctions evasion. 

Keller-Sutter said she is “quite concerned” about the country’s international reputation because of the matter.

The Swiss Bankers Association shares that concern, suggesting that it could lead to Switzerland ending up on the Financial Action Task Force, which “must to be avoided at all costs,” the association’s head of legal and compliance Felix Muff told the newspaper Neue Zurcher Zeitung.

Rene Rall, the head of the Swiss Bar Association, also weighed in, telling NZZ that while it supports strengthening Switzerland’s fight against money laundering, when it comes to policing lawyers, it believes in “maintaining the tried and tested principle of self-regulation.”

–With assistance from Hugo Miller.

(Updates with comments from banking and bar association officials in the last two paragraphs)

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