The Office of the Swiss Attorney General recently imposed heavy fines on the family-owned company Sicpa. Now the authorities trivialize those offenses.
Sometimes things happen in Switzerland that cast doubt on the rule of law.
The Office of the Attorney General (OAG) has convicted the secretive family-owned company Sicpa of criminal liability in connection with corruption in South America, as was reported by muula.ch.
Bribery of high-ranking officials
The manufacturer of special inks and security features for banknotes, passports, tax stamps, etc. had to pay a fine of 1 million Swiss francs and compensation of 80 million Swiss francs.
Specifically, Sicpa’s former sales manager took advantage of the situation with the organizational deficiencies and was found guilty by the OAG of bribing foreign officials.
Between 2009 and 2011, he had made several bribe payments to high-ranking officials in the Colombian and Venezuelan markets, according to the background into the embarrassing criminal proceedings.
Advertising material from the state
But now Switzerland’s highest law enforcement agency is also appearing in a strange light. At Sicpa’s request, it apparently issued a letter that, according to the NZZ am Sonntag newspaper, glosses over the conviction.
Sicpa, a third-generation company run by Philippe Amon and based in Prilly, Vaud, published the letter on its website, it was reported.
Apparently, the company, which relies on many public contracts for its livelihood, even used the written relativization of the corruption case by the OAG for advertising purposes.
Normally, convicted companies are excluded from public procurement.
Even after a lengthy search, muula.ch was unable to find any such letter on the Sicpa website. There are also no corresponding entries in website archives.
Unusual help
However, the company from French-speaking Switzerland has quite close ties to security authorities.
For example, the company advertises that Interpol has adopted its security features as standard. Sicpa also helps authorities detect counterfeit banknotes and passports.
Legal experts therefore described such a letter from a law enforcement agency as ‘unusual and unique’.
Opaque motives of authorities
Both the OAG and a law firm hired by Sicpa rejected the allegations of nepotism in the newspaper.
The Office of the Attorney General stated that convictions by summary penalty order are often misunderstood abroad. Therefore, the letter was intended to explain this officially.
However, the actions of Switzerland’s highest law enforcement authority are unlikely to have done itself any favors with the paper, as its motives remain opaque.
But in Switzerland, things do happen time and time again that are beyond comprehension.
03.08.2025/kut./ena.
