Lawyers in parliament do not want anti-money laundering provisions applied to them. Despite the revelations of the Panama Papers.

On March 2, a few days before confinement, 196 national councilors debated the strengthening of the law on money laundering during the opening of the parliamentary session. Better supervision of lawyers and administrators was at the center of the discussions. Important detail: the National Council has more than twenty lawyers in its ranks. This project to tighten the screw to their corporation was far from rejoicing them. Their efforts will lead to the rejection of these provisions in the Lower House.

This Thursday, the project returns to the Council of States. And lawyers are well on their way to putting their interests first in the upper chamber as well. Its Preliminary Legal Commission has certainly accepted the revision of the law on money laundering. However, by eight votes to five, it proposes to abolish the new obligations that would be imposed on lawyers and trust companies. Of the thirteen members of its commission, nine are lawyers.

The specter of the Panama Papers

The so-called Panama Papers data leak was one of the triggers for the new bill. Four years ago, these millions of documents revealed the extent to which many Swiss lawyers - especially Geneva - still served sensitive clients and hid their money, especially that of politicians from countries plagued by corruption. While the banks have become more cautious.

In the past three years, they have reported more than 16,600 suspicions of money laundering by their customers to the authorities. Over the same period, only thirteen such reports were received from lawyers and notaries. Of course, banks have many more customers. But all of their clients have lawyers. Were all but thirteen really free from suspicion?

In the wake of the Panama Papers, the international anti-money laundering authority, the FATF, has rebuked Switzerland, demanding that the loophole in oversight of lawyers be closed. The Federal Council has therefore launched a bill that could be described as “Lex Panama”. These are the provisions that were put to the vote on March 2. They aim in particular to ensure that lawyers and trustees involved in the creation, management or administration of companies and trusts are subject to the law on the fight against money laundering. This would require them to report any suspicious transactions. The PDC and PLR parliamentarians officiating as lawyers opposed it frontally. They worried about how these measures would complicate work for their profession. Vincent Maitre (PDC), a lawyer in Geneva, complained about what it would cost if an external auditor had to check the studies, as the new law would require. His Genevan colleague Christian Lüscher (PLR) was indignant that any lawyer advising a client with a company is in future subject to the law on money laundering.

A report published last year by a group of experts in which the Public Ministry of the Confederation took part points out that three-quarters of all companies reported in Switzerland for suspicion of corruption are offshore entities. The group had already written a year earlier that the advisory activities of Swiss lawyers and trustees were “very vulnerable” due to the risk of money laundering hanging over them.

Ueli Maurer folded and agreed with the lawyers' opinion

During the debate, the Minister of Finance clearly laid out the issues. If the law was not even applied, the parliamentarians would put “the image of the Swiss financial center in danger”. You cannot accept this, “just to protect the lawyers”, declared Ueli Maurer at the time.

The National Council could not be convinced. The "Lex Panama" was refused by 107 votes against 89. Twenty-one lawyers were present. Seventeen voted against.

They can now count on the support of the Finance Department of Ueli Maurer who has changed his mind. At the instigation of the Legal Commission of the Council of States, this department examined the different variants of the new anti-money laundering law. According to an internal committee document obtained by your newspaper, the Department of Finance concludes that the new lawyers' obligations "can be eliminated or significantly reduced, or should be."

This concession to the lawyers' corporation is intended to prevent the failure of the entire anti-money laundering bill. Even without these new rules on them, it would be possible to satisfy the FATF's international anti-money laundering officials, for now, the document says. At least with a "high probability".