Swiss Criminal Code

Any debt­or who fails to com­ply with a stat­utory ob­lig­a­tion to which he is sub­ject to keep and pre­serve busi­ness ac­counts or draw up a bal­ance sheet, with the res­ult that his fin­an­cial po­s­i­tion is not or not fully as­cer­tain­able, is li­able, if bank­ruptcy pro­ceed­ings are com­menced against him or a cer­ti­fic­ate of un­sat­is­fied claims has been is­sued in his re­spect fol­low­ing a seizure of as­sets in ac­cord­ance with Art­icle 43 of the Fed­er­al Act of 11 April 1889¹ on Debt En­force­ment and Bank­ruptcy (DEBA), to a cus­todi­al sen­tence not ex­ceed­ing three years or to a mon­et­ary pen­alty.