Switzerland plans mandatory mafia reporting by public employees

Swiss federal and cantonal authorities are planning to require public employees to report indications of organised crime to law enforcement, SRF reported. The obligation could apply to staff at land registry offices, food inspectors and labour market inspectors.

Under the proposal, an employee who notices suspicious property purchases or finds indications of money laundering during an inspection at a bar would have to inform the authorities. Eva Wildi-Cortés, director of the Federal Office for Police Fedpol, confirmed the plan in an interview with Radio SRF.

The obligation would apply to all employees of cantonal and municipal authorities. The cantons themselves proposed the measure during a consultation that has just ended, Wildi-Cortés said.

“They see inside businesses. They see irregularities that they can pass on. We rely on that,” she said, referring to staff at land registry offices, food inspectors and labour market inspectors.

The federal government had initially planned only to give public employees the right to report such suspicions. Under that approach, they could have decided whether to report, while remaining exempt from criminal liability if they did so.

Fedpol hopes reports from municipalities and cantons will help expose covert activities by drug rings, human trafficking gangs and cybercriminals. The aim is to prevent organised crime from infiltrating the economy and society.

The federal government and the cantons want to finalise the new obligation by the end of the year as part of a national action plan against organised crime. The cantons would then be responsible for implementing it.

Some cantons already require public employees to report suspicions, while others grant them only the right to do so. In other cantons, employees currently have no discretion and may even face criminal liability for breaching official secrecy if they report their observations. Federal employees are already subject to a reporting obligation.

Fedpol has warned for years that criminal groups could infiltrate the economy, society and public authorities. In late April, a Fedpol police officer was arrested on suspicion of selling investigative information to the drug mafia.

Wildi-Cortés said she had not known the employee of Fedpol’s federal security service personally. The office has more than 1,000 employees. She said its own staff had uncovered the suspected informant and that an initial review had found no apparent failures, including in rules governing access to police data. A more extensive analysis is under way, and further measures, such as tighter recruitment checks, could follow.