Switzerland must choose press freedom over bank secrecy

Delphine Halgand-Mishra, formerly US Director of Reporters Without Borders, is Executive Director of The Signals Network, a nonprofit dedicated to supporting whistleblowers who share public-interest information with the press. Frederik Obermaier, a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist and former deputy head of investigations at the German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung, is Co-Founder and Co-Director of the investigative newsroom Paper Trail Media

NEW DELHI: Switzerland, long admired for its federalist structure, political stability, and commitment to the rule of law, has undercut one of the most fundamental principles of a liberal democracy: a free press. Behind its polished image as a bastion of neutrality, the country is using its banking-secrecy laws not to protect privacy, but to shield misconduct, muzzle journalists, and deter potential whistleblowers.

At the center of this legal controversy is Article 47 of the Swiss Banking Act, which criminalises the disclosure of bank clients’ data – regardless of motive or public interest. Even when the leaked information reveals corruption, human-rights abuses, or illicit finance, journalists and media outlets that publish such information could face up to five years in prison and a fine. Whistleblowers themselves also risk prison sentences.

This is not an abstract issue. In 2022, the “Suisse Secrets” investigation – led by the Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) and the German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung (where one of us worked at the time) – reported on leaked records of more than 18,000 Credit Suisse accounts belonging to foreign customers. Instead of investigating the dozens of clients identified as being involved in corruption, money laundering, drug trafficking, and torture, the Swiss authorities opened a criminal inquiry into possible breaches of banking secrecy. Soon after, United Nations Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Expression and Opinion Irene Khan described the law as “an example of the criminalisation of journalism.”

Charges brought under the law do not bode well for efforts to enhance transparency and accountability. In April, Geneva-based Bank Reyl filed a criminal complaint after Le Monde, OCCRP, IrpiMedia, and Paper Trail Media (which one of us co-founded) approached it for comment on a story. The investigation, which was based on leaked communications, found that Bank Reyl was facing scrutiny from the Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority for its handling of accounts linked to autocratic regimes and politically exposed persons.

More worryingly, in June, the Zurich public prosecutor’s office raided the home and office of Lukas Hässig, the founder and editor of the financial blog Inside Paradeplatz, seizing laptops, phones, and notes. His alleged crime was using leaked bank data in his 2016 reporting on Pierin Vincenz, then-CEO of Raiffeisen Bank who was later convicted of fraud. The message to journalists is clear: those who speak out about financial misconduct at Swiss banks will be punished.

The law’s effects border on the absurd. Neil Barofsky, a former US prosecutor hired by Credit Suisse to investigate the bank’s previously undisclosed ties to Nazis and Nazi collaborators, will probably not be able to share his findings – not even with the US Senate – because doing so could breach Swiss law. This is not protecting privacy; it is enshrining secrecy at the expense of truth, accountability, and justice.

The global financial system is opaquer than ever, while rising geopolitical risks threaten its stability. In such an environment, investigative journalists and whistleblowers play an essential role. To expose and penalise sanctions evasion, the concealment of oligarch wealth, cross-border corruption, and organised crime, democratic societies depend on insiders being able to speak out – and on the press being able to report freely.

But that is not the case in Switzerland. Swiss media organisations increasingly turn down offers to participate in cross-border investigations for fear of legal retaliation. The Swiss newspaper Tages-Anzeiger had to decline an invitation to work on “Suisse Secrets,” and instead published a scathing political cartoon: Helvetia, the personified symbol of Switzerland, stands behind a gagged and bound journalist as cheering autocrats watch from the wings. Whistleblowers in Switzerland now turn to foreign journalists to ensure that the truth is revealed. This is not how a democracy should function.

Some Swiss politicians – mainly from the Social Democrats and the Greens, but also a number of chastened centrists – are beginning to admit that the law, which was significantly tightened in 2015, may have gone too far. But the government has so far been dismissive, falling back on the argument that no journalist has been convicted under Article 47 – as if this tool of intimidation, which leads to self-censorship and self-exile, doesn’t already create a chilling effect on the profession. Moreover, the case of Hässig and Inside Paradeplatz may eventually invalidate the premise.

The choice facing Switzerland is clear. It can cling to an outdated model of secrecy that represses press freedom, or it can align its laws with democratic standards and ensure that public-interest journalism is protected, not prosecuted. No democracy should criminalise telling the truth, and no journalist should face jail for exposing crime. Article 47 is a case study in how liberal democracies can subvert themselves. Switzerland must remove the threat.

Delphine Halgand-Mishra, formerly US Director of Reporters Without Borders, is Executive Director of The Signals Network, a nonprofit dedicated to supporting whistleblowers who share public-interest information with the press. Frederik Obermaier, a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist and former deputy head of investigations at the German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung, is Co-Founder and Co-Director of the investigative newsroom Paper Trail Media