DiKE Geldwäschereibekämpfung bei Investmentgesellschaften

Unlike all other financial intermediaries, investment companies must apply their due diligence obligations under the Anti-Money Laundering Act (AMLA) to share relationships rather than business relationships. While business relationships are based on contracts under the law of obligations and thus freedom of contract, share relationships usually arise by operation of law and are based on largely mandatory share law. Investment companies may not even become aware of new shareholders. Moreover, an existing shareholder's membership cannot, in principle, be withdrawn. The AMLA is designed around the concept of the business relationship and hardly addresses the shareholder relationship. Therefore, the St. Gallen dissertation focuses on questions regarding the implementation of the various AMLA due diligence obligations by investment companies based on the recently enacted AMLA revision to implement the FATF recommendations and to enforce them against shareholders. To this end, various instruments under civil and public law - such as share transfer restrictions, reporting obligations under company law and disclosure obligations under stock exchange law - are being examined. In addition, the focus is on qualified investor status in accordance with the Collective Investment Schemes Act (CISA): In the case of investment companies with exclusively qualified investors, FINMA's ongoing practice requires that the qualified investor status be taken into account in the context of the AMLA guarantee provision.