Federal Court rules on access to information on gold imports
Published: Wednesday, Nov 8th 2023, 09:20
Updated At: Thursday, Nov 9th 2023, 00:54
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The Federal Supreme Court will hold a public hearing next week on whether the Society for Threatened Peoples should be granted access to the figures on the origin of the gold imported into Switzerland. The lower court rejected the request on the grounds that the data was subject to tax secrecy. The data was covered by tax secrecy.
The human rights organization Society for Threatened Peoples (STP) hopes that access to the information will lead to greater transparency in the gold trade. It requested the figures on imported raw gold from seven companies, including two banks, for the years 2014 to 2017 on the basis of the Public Access Act.
The Federal Office for Customs and Border Security finally agreed to hand over the requested information. The companies Argor-Heraeus, Metalor Technologies, MKS and Valcambi appealed against this decision to the Federal Administrative Court and were upheld. In the course of the inspection proceedings, the STP relinquished the banks' data.
Tax secrecy as a hurdle
The Federal Administrative Court concluded that the data was collected for the purpose of assessing VAT and was therefore subject to tax secrecy. It was irrelevant that the information was also collected for other purposes.
According to the STP, around 70 percent of the world's gold is refined or traded in Switzerland. However, the supply chains are not very transparent. The State Secretariat for Economic Affairs (Seco) is therefore involved in the "Swiss Better Gold Initiative", which aims to improve working conditions in small-scale mining and environmental protection in particular.
©Keystone/SDA
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