While Switzerland dropped two places to seventh in last year’s ranking, “it’s the Swiss private sector where the situation is bad,” said Hilti, who wants lawmakers to raise compensation for fired workers to 12 months pay and to allow whistleblowers to report wrongdoing anonymously. “You’re not protected against discrimination, against getting fired and you even risk prosecution.”
Officials at the Swiss Justice Ministry declined to provide details on revisions to the draft law.
While most international companies operating in Switzerland have procedures for whistleblowers, they do so voluntarily and base them on global standards resulting from anti-corruption legislation in nations like the U.S. or the U.K., according to Susanne Hofmann, head of PricewaterhouseCoopers’s Swiss legal compliance practice.
Better Image
It could be beneficial to pass whistleblower legislation, said Penelope Lepeudry, a partner in forensic services at Deloitte in Geneva. Having a law “will give a better image of Switzerland as a place to do business,” she said.
Still, Lepeudry said few nations can compete with levels of protection provided in the U.S. where the 2002 Sarbanes-Oxley Act states that anyone who retaliates against a legitimate whistleblower faces as long as 10 years in prison.
While Swiss lawmakers deliberate, the federal police last September set up www.fightingcorruption.ch, a web platform that accepts anonymous complaints about wrongdoing that can be used to begin a formal investigation. Sabine Zeilinger, a spokeswoman for the Swiss Federal Police, said it’s too soon to comment on how many cases have been generated by the new platform. It’s a positive step, said Transparency International’s Hilti, “but the Swiss civil code still lags behind.”
Birkenfeld, who once smuggled diamonds for a bank client in a tube of toothpaste, is happy to offer advice to lawmakers pondering the new law.
“There’s a whole litany of companies in Switzerland that should be embracing this not fighting it,” said Birkenfeld who spent part of his cash on a Porsche with a license plate bearing an old UBS marketing slogan “You and Us.”. “Switzerland has to come to the 21st century and stop living in the past.”