Swiss Criminal Code

¹ Any per­son who in his ca­pa­city as a pub­lic of­fi­cial, em­ploy­ee or aux­il­i­ary of an or­gan­isa­tion provid­ing postal or tele­com­mu­nic­a­tions ser­vices re­veals to a third party de­tails of cus­tom­ers' post, pay­ments or tele­com­mu­nic­a­tions, opens sealed mail or tries to find out its con­tent, or al­lows a third party the op­por­tun­ity to carry out such an act shall be li­able to a cus­todi­al sen­tence not ex­ceed­ing three years or to a mon­et­ary pen­alty.

² The fore­go­ing pen­al­ties also ap­ply to any per­son who by de­cep­tion causes a per­son bound by a duty of con­fid­en­ti­al­ity in terms of para­graph 1 to breach his ob­lig­a­tion of secrecy.

³ A breach of postal or tele­com­mu­nic­a­tions secrecy re­mains an of­fence even after ter­min­a­tion of em­ploy­ment as a pub­lic of­fi­cial, em­ploy­ee or aux­il­i­ary of an or­gan­isa­tion provid­ing postal or tele­com­mu­nic­a­tion ser­vices.

⁴ A breach of postal or tele­com­mu­nic­a­tions secrecy does not carry a pen­alty if it is car­ried out in or­der to de­term­ine the iden­tity of the en­titled per­son or to pre­vent loss or dam­age be­ing oc­ca­sioned.

⁵ Art­icle 179^octies is re­served, to­geth­er with the fed­er­al and can­ton­al pro­vi­sions on the ob­lig­a­tions to give evid­ence or provide in­form­a­tion to a pub­lic au­thor­ity.