Federal Act
on the Licensing and Oversight
of Auditors
(Auditor Oversight Act, AOA)

¹ Any per­son who com­mits any of the fol­low­ing of­fences shall be li­able to a cus­todi­al sen­tence not ex­ceed­ing three years or a mon­et­ary pen­alty:⁸⁴

a.

provid­ing an audit­ing ser­vice without the ne­ces­sary li­cence or des­pite be­ing pro­hib­ited from prac­tising his or her pro­fes­sion;

a^bis.⁸⁵ provid­ing false in­form­a­tion in the audit re­port or in the audit re­port or audit con­firm­a­tion about es­sen­tial facts or with­holds es­sen­tial facts;

b.⁸⁶

fail­ing to grant the Over­sight Au­thor­ity ac­cess to his or her busi­ness premises (Art­icle 13 para­graph 2), fails to provide it with the re­ques­ted in­form­a­tion or fails to sub­mit the re­ques­ted doc­u­ments (Art. 15a para. 1) or provides it with false or in­com­plete in­form­a­tion;

c.

fail­ing to com­ply with the du­ties to doc­u­ment and re­tain re­cords as an audit firm un­der state over­sight (Art. 730c CO⁸⁷);

d.

as a third party en­gaged by the Over­sight Au­thor­ity (Art­icle 20), dis­clos­ing a secret, dur­ing or after com­ple­tion of the activ­ity, that was en­trus­ted to it in this ca­pa­city or that came to its at­ten­tion in this ca­pa­city (the fed­er­al and can­ton­al pro­vi­sions on the duty to testi­fy and the duty to in­form an au­thor­ity shall con­tin­ue to ap­ply).

² If the of­fence is com­mit­ted through neg­li­gence, the fine shall not ex­ceed 100 000 francs.

³ Pro­sec­u­tion and judg­ment shall be the re­spons­ib­il­ity of the can­tons.