B-04-50 Comm. FINMA 01/2025

The Swiss Federal Supreme Court has ruled that tax secrecy takes precedence over the principle of transparency (ruling intended for publication 1C_272/2022, delivered in open court by four votes to one). The origin of this ruling lies in the request of the NGO Society for Threatened Peoples, based on the Transparency Act (LTrans). The NGO was asking the Federal Office of Customs and Border Protection (FOCB) for access to detailed statistics on gold imports by major Swiss importers, for the[...]

The Swiss Federal Supreme Court examines a new case involving a change of fund management and the levying of transfer duties in the canton of Fribourg, confirming previous case law while clarifying who bears the economic burden of taxation (9C_312/2023 of December 7, 2023, intended for publication). The case concerns a real estate investment trust which has changed its fund management. E. SA was registered as a quasi-fiduciary owner of some fifteen properties in the canton of Fribourg and acted[...]

A wealthy customer and a bank have been doing business for over 30 years. As part of an execution-only contractual relationship, the customer orders forward currency transactions (RUB/JPY and RUB/CHF). On December 16, 2014, due to a sharp fall in the Russian ruble exchange rate, the bank prematurely closes the forward transactions after contacting its customer, resulting in losses for the latter. The customer initiated legal proceedings to claim compensation equivalent to the smaller loss he would have suffered had[...]

Following the deterioration in relations between a major IT service provider and a Geneva bank, the Court of Justice of the Canton of Geneva recently addressed various issues relating to an IT contract in a ruling dated October 4, 2022 (ACJC/1497/2022). In 2006, a Geneva bank decided to migrate its IT system. It entered into a series of contracts with a Zurich-based company, which was to carry out the migration and then operate the system. The contract is for a[...]