UBS declined to comment.
In the Nestle case, Yasmine Motarjemi, a former food safety director, said the company is counter-suing her for violations of professional secrecy. Nestle, based in Vevey, Switzerland, has denied Motarjemi’s allegations of harassment and that the world’s largest foodmaker ignored her warnings about product safety.
“The safety and quality our our products are our absolute priorities, and we do not tolerate failures in this area,” Nestle said in an e-mail.
While British retailer Tesco Plc and Volkswagen AG have in recent weeks acknowledged the debt they owe to whistleblowers, Switzerland doesn’t yet accept their role as a catalyst for change. The Swiss Parliament may debate the new draft law in the second half of this year, said Jositsch.
As it stands, the proposed legislation is flawed, according to the nation’s antitrust regulator.
Flawed Legislation
“It’s a law that’s timid compared with international standards,” Vincent Martenet, president of Switzerland’s Competition Commission and a professor of constitutional law at the University of Lausanne, said in an interview. “We are for the protection of whistleblowers as it’s an important tool to ensure the detection of cartels.”
The draft law would require employees to allow companies 60 days to give notice they were taking a claim seriously. Absent that notice, employees could contact a government agency or authority with the information. The government would then have two weeks to respond. If it does not, the whistleblower could go public. The employee would be entitled to six months’ severance, but would not necessarily keep his job.
The latest draft would be “even worse” than having no law, said Martin Hilti, executive director of the Swiss office of Transparency International, which compiles a Corruption Perceptions Index that focuses on the public sector worldwide.
Corruption Ranking