The Money Laundering Reporting Office Switzerland (MROS) is a Swiss Financial Intelligence Unit and functions as a relay and filtration point between financial intermediaries and the law enforcement agencies. MROS is operated by the Federal Office of Police (fedpol). According to the Money Laundering Act MROS is responsible for receiving and analysing suspicious activity reports in connection with money laundering and, if necessary, forwarding them to the law enforcement agencies.
MROS is also a specialised body that publishes annual statistics on developments in the fight against money laundering, organised crime and terrorist financing in Switzerland, and identifies typologies that are useful for training the financial intermediaries.
Additional, each of the 26 cantons has investigative and prosecutorial authorities that deal with any crime, including money laundering and corruption where the Office of the Attorney General has no competence. The competence to investigate and prosecute belongs in principle to the Cantons. They also execute requests for mutual legal assistance. In the area of asset recovery, the most important cantonal authorities are those of Zurich, Geneva, Lugano (for the canton of Ticino) and Vaud (Lausanne).
The Reporting Office is a member of the Egmont Group, which is an international association of "Financial Intelligence Units (FIU)" whose objective is to foster a safe, prompt and legally admissible exchange of information in order to combat money laundering and terrorist financing.
