Conclusion of the supervisor: too many trifles at the federal prosecutor’s office

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The federal prosecutor’s office too often has to wrestle with trifles. In addition, their file management is outdated and incomplete, which a new system is currently fixing. The regulator comes to these conclusions via the Public Prosecution Service (AB-BA).

In its regular inspection in 2022, the AB-BA examined some 6,400 process closures and non-application orders from the Federal Prosecutor’s Office (BA) from the years 2016 to 2020, as announced on Tuesday. If the CA does not take up or discontinues a case, this has the legal effect of an acquittal.

Because such orders are rarely referred to the Federal Criminal Court, the AB-BA claims to have a special monitoring function.

Lots of light crime

According to the AB-BA, the figures collected during the inspection show that the BA has a lot to do with low-threshold crime. That suggests a review of the list of responsibilities, the regulator wrote. The BA’s legal mandate is to combat serious crime in the areas of state security, organized crime, terrorism and white-collar crime.

The inspection also revealed incomplete and outdated file management. The CA does not systematically register which crimes it prosecutes. In some cases, she stamps files for completion without entering the approvals into the system. However, a new case management system is currently being introduced to remedy the shortcomings.

The completion figures found during the inspection differ from those in the BA annual report. Sentence orders are therefore listed separately in the annual report, but suspensions and non-compliance are only bundled according to procedure.

According to the AB-BA, this gives the impression of stricter performance practice. Federal prosecutor Stefan Blättler had this corrected in the first annual report 2022 that was prepared under him.

In many cases no proceedings were opened

The analysis of the individual departments also showed that no proceedings were initiated in 97 percent of cases in international criminal law. In commercial criminal law, 90 percent of cases were not prosecuted.

The investigation into process duration found that 90 percent of state security procedures were completed in six months. In more than half of the procedures in commercial criminal law, this was the case after three years at the earliest.

The AB-BA is elected for four years by the Federal Assembly. It consists of a federal judge, a federal criminal judge, two lawyers registered in the lawyers register and three specialists. (SDA)

Source:Blick