Swiss Criminal Code

¹ Any per­son who, as a mem­ber of the board of dir­ect­ors or the ex­ec­ut­ive board of a com­pany whose shares are lis­ted on a stock ex­change, pays or ac­cepts re­mu­ner­a­tion that is not per­mit­ted in terms of Art­icle 735c let­ters 1, 5 and 6 of the Code of Ob­lig­a­tions (CO)²¹³, if ap­plic­able in con­junc­tion with Art­icle 735d num­ber 1 CO, shall be li­able to a cus­todi­al sen­tence not ex­ceed­ing three years and to a mon­et­ary pen­alty.

² Any per­son who, as a mem­ber of the board of dir­ect­ors of a com­pany whose shares are lis­ted on a stock ex­change, car­ries out any of the fol­low­ing acts shall be li­able to a cus­todi­al sen­tence not ex­ceed­ing three years or to a mon­et­ary pen­alty:

a.²¹⁴

del­eg­at­ing the man­age­ment of busi­ness wholly or partly to a leg­al en­tity in vi­ol­a­tion of Art­icle 716b para­graph 2 first sen­tence CO;

b.

delegating the voting rights of corporate bodies or delegating voting rights to custodian banks(Art. 689bpara. 2 CO);

c.

pre­vent­ing:

1.

the art­icles of as­so­ci­ation from con­tain­ing the pro­vi­sions spe­cified in Art­icle 626 para­graph 2 let­ters 1 and 2 CO,

2.

the gen­er­al meet­ing from be­ing able, an­nu­ally and in­di­vidu­ally, to elect the mem­bers and the chair of the board of dir­ect­ors, the mem­bers of the re­mu­ner­a­tion com­mit­tee and the in­de­pend­ent vot­ing rep­res­ent­at­ive (Art. 698 para. 2 no 2 and para. 3 no 1–3 CO),

3.

the gen­er­al meet­ing from be­ing able to vote on the re­mu­ner­a­tion that the board of dir­ect­ors has de­term­ined for it­self, the ex­ec­ut­ive board and the board of ad­visors (Art. 698 para. 3 no 4 CO),

4.

the share­hold­ers or their rep­res­ent­at­ives from be­ing able to ex­er­cise their rights by elec­tron­ic means (Art. 689c para. 6 CO).

³ If the per­pet­rat­or merely ac­cepts the pos­sib­il­ity that an of­fence un­der para­graph 1 or 2 may be com­mit­ted, he or she shall not be li­able to pro­sec­u­tion un­der these pro­vi­sions.

⁴ In cal­cu­lat­ing the mon­et­ary pen­alty, the court shall not be bound by the max­im­um value of a daily pen­alty unit (Art. 34 para. 2 first sen­tence); however, the mon­et­ary pen­alty may not ex­ceed six times the an­nu­al re­mu­ner­a­tion agreed with the com­pany con­cerned at the time of the of­fence.