FINMA: Swiss banks are more careful over money laundering

According to Mark Branson, director of FINMA, the Swiss banks are more focused on the question of money laundering, as the daily Tribune de Genève and 24 Heures reported today.

"We know that illegal behavior usually relates to the customer and not the bank," says Branson. The Federal Authority tolerance of financial market supervision in particular ends when "the reports were not taken into consideration or when the control system has been deliberately omitted from the top management."

According to Branson, the offenses are committed by individuals and not by the institutions. Once the bank secrecy attracted people from the middle class living in neighboring countries, for tax reasons; now the asset management industry has had to turn to customers from more distant countries, the emerging ones , "but the origin of their assets is much more difficult to understand."

For this reason, FINMA has asked banks a heightened effort to report suspicious transactions and customers, last April.