Amendments to Anti-money Laundering Act

On 1 June 2018 the Federal Council initiated the consultation on a number of amendments to the Anti-money Laundering Act. The draft bill marks the third bundle of legislative measures to comprehensively implement the recommendations of the Financial Action Task Force in its latest mutual evaluation report on Switzerland.

As a first step, on 4 September 2017 the Financial Market Supervisory Authority published a draft amendment to its anti-money laundering ordinance that introduced: 

• enhanced verification duties for establishing beneficial owners;
• a requirement to regularly review and update know-your-customer (KYC) information also in respect of client relationships not involving particular risks; 
• new monitoring duties encompassing operations abroad; and 
• new criteria for classifying a relationship or transaction as 'high risk'.

The revised ordinance is scheduled to come into force in 2018.

A second bundle of legislative measures that focused on increasing the transparency of legal entities and proposed abolishing bearer shares was published for consultation on 17 January 2018.

This publication provides an overview of the proposed new rules.