Federal Act
on International Mutual Assistance in Criminal Matters
(Mutual Assistance Act, IMAC)

¹ The com­pet­ent can­ton­al or fed­er­al au­thor­ity may by way of ex­cep­tion or­der the early trans­mis­sion of in­form­a­tion or evid­ence gathered be­fore the fi­nal rul­ing is is­sued:

a.

if for­eign in­vest­ig­a­tions in cases re­lat­ing to or­gan­ised crime or ter­ror­ism would be made dis­pro­por­tion­ately dif­fi­cult without this mu­tu­al as­sist­ance meas­ure, in par­tic­u­lar where there is a risk of col­lu­sion or in or­der to safe­guard the con­fid­en­ti­al­ity of the pro­ceed­ings; or

b.

in or­der to avert a ser­i­ous and im­me­di­ate danger, and in par­tic­u­lar the com­mis­sion of a ter­ror­ist of­fence.

² The in­form­a­tion or evid­ence con­cerned must be con­nec­ted with the pre­ven­tion or the pro­sec­u­tion of an ex­tra­dit­able crim­in­al of­fence.

³ Early trans­mis­sion may be ordered with or without a re­quest be­ing re­ceived. If it is ordered in the ab­sence of a re­quest, the com­pet­ent can­ton­al or fed­er­al au­thor­ity shall trans­mit only the non-per­son­al data re­quired to as­sess the po­s­i­tion, sub­ject to re­ceiv­ing the un­der­tak­ings spe­cified in para­graph 4.

⁴ Early trans­mis­sion is con­di­tion­al on the re­quest­ing au­thor­ity provid­ing an un­der­tak­ing in ad­vance that:

a.

the in­form­a­tion or evid­ence will be used solely to as­sist with in­vest­ig­a­tions, and un­der no cir­cum­stances for the pur­pose of re­quest­ing, jus­ti­fy­ing or is­su­ing a fi­nal de­cision;

b.

it will in­form the com­pet­ent can­ton­al or fed­er­al au­thor­ity as soon as the for­eign pro­ceed­ings per­mit that the per­son con­cerned may be no­ti­fied of the early trans­mis­sion un­der Art­icle 80m so that he or she can re­spond be­fore the fi­nal rul­ing is is­sued;

c.

it will re­move the in­form­a­tion or evid­ence ob­tained through early trans­mis­sion from the files for the for­eign pro­ceed­ings if mu­tu­al as­sist­ance is re­fused.

⁵ No­ti­fic­a­tion of the per­son con­cerned shall be de­ferred.

⁶ No­tice of the in­ter­im rul­ing in ac­cord­ance with para­graph 1 shall be giv­en to the Fed­er­al Of­fice without delay and be­fore the early trans­mis­sion. It is not in it­self con­test­able.