Ethics and governance in the European Financial centers

Both Switzerland and Luxembourg have the same requirement for professionals in their law : all the guaranties of an irreprocheable activity i.e. all the guaranties of proper conduct of business operations :
- for Switzerland, see notably article 3 of Federal Act of 8 November 1934 on Banks and. Savings Banks and article 3 of Federal Act of 24 March 1995 on Stock Exchanges and Trading in Securities.
- for Luxembourg see articles 7 and 19 of the Law of 5 April 1993 on the financial sector, as amended.


We may state three observations :
- The wording is similar
- The requirement is stricter than the audit requirement that whould be a "raisonnable assurance" of an irreprocheable activity.
- the word irreprocheable itself is more extensive than licit and accept no drift in the behevior.


It seems that Switzerland is much more serious in the implementation of the requirement :
- thanks to a stronger communication and transparence on the issue that can be traced on the Web with a search engine,
- thanks to evidences of the implementation, especially in public judgements.

There are no evidence of an actual implementation in Luxembourg, especially on www.codeplafi.lu, which is the official extensive database, of all laws, regulations and circulars governing the regime and the activities of banks, of investment firms and other professionals of the financial sector, of insurance and reinsurance companies, the financial markets and instruments and the Luxembourg monetary status as well as to indications on case law and writings. We find only the text of the law and regulation. Most cases that are presented are relating to Bank secrecy.

On the opposite, there are many evidence that the system is actually living in Switzerland beyond the official texts. There is especially a circular that summerise the requirement and the implementation including law cases. This document is unfortunately available only in French and German.
Irreprocheable_activity_French_text_.pdf
Irreprocheable_activity_German_text_.pdf