[image: Switzerland to crack down on illicit deposits] Law makers in Switzerland plan to confiscate and refund illicit deposits by "politically exposed persons". *Agathe Duparc* of Le Monde reports
** After years as one of the favourite destinations for potentates eager to stash their ill-gotten gains, Switzerland is attempting a makeover, posing as the world leader – according to the foreign ministry – for confiscating and refunding illicit deposits made by “politically exposed persons”. On 28 April the government submitted to parliament a bill designed to supplement a system of international mutual assistance that over the past 15 years has enabled more than $1.5bn to be refunded to the countries of origin. This included assets embezzled by Philippine dictator Ferdinand Marcos <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferdinand_Marcos>, Sani Abacha<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sani_Abacha>of Nigeria and the brother of Mexico’s President Carlos Salinas. The new law will enable countries with courts lacking the necessary powers to obtain the confiscation and return of assets. “With the law, cases such as Mobutu or Duvalier will not happen again,” promised the foreign minister, Micheline Calmy-Rey. In 2009 the heirs of the former ruler of Zaire, now the Democratic Republic of the Congo, managed to recover some $7m frozen in Switzerland since 1997, because the Congolese courts failed to provide proof of the illicit origin of the assets, as required by the law on international mutual assistance for criminal affairs. Similarly the assets of the former president of Haiti, Jean-Claude Duvalier<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Claude_Duvalier>(about $7m), frozen from 2002, came close to being restored to his family, Haitian courts lacking the powers to act. The authorities in Port-au-Prince should be the first to benefit from the new legislation. Under the bill’s provisions the “owners” of suspect assets will be required to prove they were obtained by honest means. NGOs say the measures do not go far enough. “The new law assumes a failed state will be able to file a request for judicial mutual assistance, which is far from always being the case,” says Olivier Longchamp of the Berne Declaration, an NGO promoting fairer democratic North-South relations.
