Federal Court rules on access to data on gold imports
Published: Wednesday, Nov 15th 2023, 04:50
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The Federal Supreme Court is holding a public hearing today to discuss whether the Society for Threatened Peoples should be granted access to information on the origin of gold imported into Switzerland. The lower court rejected the request on the grounds that the data was subject to 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.
Rejected due to tax secrecy
The Federal Administrative Court came to the conclusion that the data was collected for the assessment of 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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