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

¹ In or­der to en­force this Act, the Over­sight Au­thor­ity may ask for­eign audit over­sight au­thor­it­ies for in­form­a­tion and doc­u­ments.

² It may trans­fer in­form­a­tion and doc­u­ments that are not pub­licly ac­cess­ible to for­eign audit over­sight au­thor­it­ies, provided that these au­thor­it­ies:

a.

only use the in­form­a­tion sup­plied for the dir­ect over­sight of in­di­vidu­als and firms provid­ing audit ser­vices;

b.⁵⁶

are bound by of­fi­cial or pro­fes­sion­al secrecy, not­with­stand­ing pro­vi­sions on the pub­lic nature of pro­ceed­ings and the no­ti­fic­a­tion of the gen­er­al pub­lic about such pro­ceed­ings;

c.

pass on the in­form­a­tion to au­thor­it­ies and bod­ies that per­form over­sight tasks in the pub­lic in­terest and are bound by of­fi­cial and pro­fes­sion­al secrecy only if this is done on the basis of au­thor­isa­tion con­ferred by a treaty or with the Over­sight Au­thor­ity’s pri­or con­sent.

³ The Over­sight Au­thor­ity shall re­fuse to give its con­sent if the in­form­a­tion is to be passed on to crim­in­al pro­sec­u­tion au­thor­it­ies or au­thor­it­ies and bod­ies with powers to im­pose sanc­tions un­der ad­min­is­trat­ive law and, due to the nature of the of­fence, mu­tu­al leg­al as­sist­ance in crim­in­al mat­ters would be ex­cluded. The Over­sight Au­thor­ity shall reach its de­cision in agree­ment with the Fed­er­al Of­fice of Justice.

⁴ With­in the con­text of para­graph 2, the Fed­er­al Coun­cil shall be au­thor­ised to reg­u­late the co­oper­a­tion with for­eign audit over­sight au­thor­it­ies in treat­ies.