Jurisdiction of the Geneva Authorities to Prosecute and Judge the Customs Offenses Attributed to Josef Wolff

Facts

Josef Wolff was purchasing watches in Switzerland to smuggle them abroad. In the autumn of 1954, he asked Henri Bühler, an employee of the shipping company Natural AG in Bienne, to provide him with export declarations bearing the customs stamp. Bühler then successively had watches cleared through customs and exported, which Wolff would retrieve en route to direct them to the free port of Geneva. There, the watches were taken over by Adolphe Spieler, a declarant of the company Air Transport Service in Geneva, who would evade the customs control upon re-entry into Switzerland and then hand them over to Bühler, who in turn passed them on to Wolff, who remunerated him for his collaboration.

On September 27, 1955, the inspectors of the Geneva customs district heard Spieler after discovering his maneuvers. Two days later, they questioned Bühler and, on October 11, Wolff. The investigation was continued against the latter by officials from the Zurich and then Basel districts.

On October 31, 1956, the Basel district management drew up a contravention report against Wolff. By decision of January 27, 1961, the Federal Department of Finance and Customs convicted him of various customs and tax offenses. Wolff filed an objection.

The Federal Public Prosecutor's Office requested the Indictment Chamber of the Federal Tribunal to determine which of the cantons of Geneva, Zurich, Bern or Neuchâtel has jurisdiction to rule on the offenses attributed to Wolff.

Considerations

The Indictment Chamber considered that Geneva was the sole place of commission of the offense, as that is where the watches were fraudulently re-imported. It therefore declared the authorities of the Canton of Geneva competent to prosecute and judge the offenses attributed to Josef Wolff.

Indeed, according to case law, when several persons are co-perpetrators of a customs offense, the jurisdiction is determined at the place where the investigation was first opened. In the present case, the investigation was first opened in Geneva.

The Indictment Chamber also considered that the fact that a co-perpetrator acted mainly outside the place of commission of the offense cannot justify a…