Justice minister committed to fighting crime, money laundering

Swiss Justice Minister Ruth Metzler plans to step up international cooperation in fighting organised crime and money laundering, but believes that the country has been unfairly targeted by recent media headlines relating to Russian corruption scandals.

Swiss Justice Minister Ruth Metzler plans to step up international cooperation in fighting organised crime and money laundering, but believes that the country has been unfairly targeted by recent media headlines relating to Russian corruption scandals.

Speaking in an Associated Press news agency interview released on Thursday, Metzler for the first time commented on media reports that Swiss financial institutions were linked to high-level corruption investigations in Moscow.

“It is a pity that those investigations have led the media to yet again paint a negative picture of Switzerland,” Metzler said.

“The fact of the matter is that the Swiss authorities have been very active in fighting crime and succeeded in uncovering many cases of illegal activities,” she added.

Switzerland has significantly stepped up international cooperation, not least with Russia and Ukraine, according to the justice minister. Metzler said that Russian requests for legal assistance had increased from 16 to 63 cases over the past four years. And those from Ukraine went up five-fold to total 25 requests.

Metzler said the media headlines in past months about the “Russian connection” were largely due to the fact that prominent names were suddenly involved.

Russian investigators have been working with the Swiss authorities to find out whether dirty money – including assets of the Russian state-run Aeroflot airline – was laundered in Swiss banks. There were also reports that a Swiss company was involved in a bribery case allegedly linked to President Boris Yeltsin’s family.

Metzler praised the efforts of the Swiss banks to be more careful about possible illegal activities. She said the fact that the 160 bank tip-offs on suspect funds totalling SFr 334 million ($212 million) were proof that financial institutions were committed to implementing the stricter anti-money laundering legislation implemented in April last year.

However, the head of the Swiss Money Laundering Reporting Office, Daniel Thelesklaf, said Wednesday that there was still an apparent reluctance of bankers to report suspect transactions.

The Swiss government on Wednesday urged parliament to approve new cross-border cooperation with Germany, Austria and Liechtenstein to boost joint crime fighting measures. Switzerland already has such accords with France and Italy.

From staff and wire reports.