Amendment of the Regulation on International Mutual Legal Assistance

International cooperation in law enforcement is of great importance due to increasing globalisation. It often happens that criminal offences are committed across borders or that an offender commits crimes in several countries at the same time. In the area of white-collar crime, too, globalisation has led to increasingly international offences. In order to prosecute international crimes, the prosecuting state requests legal assistance. However, the request of another state is usually only granted if the latter grants reciprocal rights.^[1] The Federal Council has addressed this bureaucratic problem and approved an amendment to the Mutual Legal Assistance Ordinance. This will come into force on 1 November 2020.

As mentioned above, if mutual assistance between Switzerland and another state is not governed by international or bilateral treaties, mutual assistance is often only granted if a reciprocal right is granted by the requesting state. The competence to decide on this lies with the Federal Office of Justice, which has so far issued a statement on the Swiss legal situation. This is too non-binding in the perspective of other states. They require a formal and binding declaration of reciprocity from Switzerland. With the current legal situation, only the Federal Council can make such a declaration of reciprocity. With the new ordinance, a binding declaration of reciprocity should be possible in future without requiring a specific decision by the Federal Council. With the ordinance, the Federal Council delegates the competence to the competent Federal Department of Justice and Police. 

The aim of this amendment is to make international mutual legal assistance more efficient in practice and without delay. According to the Federal Council, it should be possible to cooperate successfully with as many countries as possible, which is very important in the fight against growing international economic crime.

^[1] https://www.admin.ch/gov/de/start/dokumentation/medienmitteilungen.msg-id-80112.html