 The institutionalization of the fight against white-collar crime in Switzerland, 1970-1990Thibaud Giddey Business History, 2022, vol. 64, issue 7, 1185-1210 Abstract: During the 1970s and 1980s, economic and financial crime turned into a societal issue in Switzerland. The perpetrators of white-collar crime often enjoyed total impunity: legal proceedings were very time consuming, authorities in charge of judicial investigation were under-resourced. This paper investigates how the political and judicial authorities responded to this challenge. By the end of the 1980s, a strong shift towards a more specialized handling of financial crime by public prosecutors occurred. Specialized departments were set up and judges were trained in commercial matters. This transformation breached with a long tradition of leniency and inefficient judicial handling of economic crime. Based on archival evidence, this paper sheds new light on the drivers of an institutionalization process which affected not only the Swiss financial centre, but also all the global judicial proceedings which relied on it. Professionalizing the response to financial crime also aimed at restoring the corporate reputation of Swiss financial firms, in a context of growing competition among offshore financial centers. Date: 2022 Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:bushst:v:64:y:2022:i:7:p:1185-1210 Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from DOI: 10.1080/00076791.2020.1856077 Access Statistics for this article Business History is currently edited by Professor John Wilson and Professor Steven Toms More articles in Business History from Taylor & Francis Journals |
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