Ongoing legal actions against employer after I leave CH

Hi all

Just wondering what would happen to ongoing legal procedure / actions when I leave Switzerland. In simple words, I fear that I have to take my current employer to the Arbeitsgericht / employment court, for some wrong doings they did to me.

As in 5 months I was planning to leave Switzerland and the all legal stuff might not end before I leave, what would happen, to ongoing legal action when I will not be resident anymore of CH? they still continue? is online attendance possible?

Sorry but I am totally ignorant on these stuff.

You should give more detail as it’s super generic.
To increase the chance of winning you should stay resident until your case is settle as official communication may be send by post mail.

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It is basically a fraud case: the employer deducted lots of stuff from my salary and put the amount in his pocket. I can prove all this very easily matching the effective contribution done to pension fund with the amount deducted that he stated on my pay slips, salary certificates.

I was wondering if in such case shall I just go to police or the Betreibunsgamt?

Well, i’m of the same opinion as FunnyDjo - you should provide us with more information to have a “intelligent” answer.
A couple of things are actually to be deductet from a salary, and not all deduction go to pension fund - but that doesnt mean for sure, that there is a fraud.

And i guess in the first place, neither the police nor the betreibungsamt are the right entities
 you should consult a lawyer specialised in this kind of topic


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I would contact directly a lawyer.

A lawyer association may exist in your canton providing a 1st legal advice for free or a low fees

Example for Geneva

Then, you’ll have a clear view on the next steps (with or without a lawyer). If you do not reside anymore in Switzerland, you may need to elect for a reprensative in order to receive the correspondence.

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The employment court also provides free consultation.

@FI_yes_RE_maybe of course I have checked all the deductions carefully. And the the result is that part of them went in the pocket of the employer.

I ask myself how stuff like this could happen in a country like CH that claims to be so organized etc. This country is not organized at all, and if similar crap happens employers should go to jail as it happens in serious countries.

There are some deductions that could be mis-interpreted as beeing pocketed in by your employer. Understand you need to reserve privacy - but if you can give us the headlines of the deductions you think were pocketed in, we may give you a sense on whether we talk about the (sometimes) weird Swiss system or indeed potential fraud. You are extremely unlikely to experience fraud like this in Switzerland. If it happens, its mainly on cross-border body lease arangements where employers deduct fantasy proces for services they provide, like housing cost


Ok, the main one is on 2nd pillar which is splitted 50% 50%, example 200 me and 200 the employer.

What I realized is that the employer charged 270 for BVG to me. I check with the pension fund confirmed that the total monthly deductions Employee + Employer is 400 / Month. This means that if I paid 270, the employer paid 130. Doing this is illegal as the employer should contribute for at least 50%.

No such a things happen alot in CH as employers in this country are unpunished and there is a lack of laws, proper authorities.

So did you request clarification from your employer?

Also make sure the difference is not due to the ‘Risikobeitrag’, which is for the 2nd pillar insurance against the risks of death and disability and does not get added to the savings.

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The Risikobeitrag stuff has also been taken into consideration.

I am waiting for an answer from them since 10 days, which of course they don’t have.

I was wondering, if I call / inform the shareholders of the company, would this be illegal, or I am not breaking any law as shareholders are owner of a company that is doing illegal stuff? Maybe this would put some pressure and sort out the issue?

I would avoid that, you might risk legal jeopardy with semi-public rants that can be interpreted as defamation. Put your complaint in letter with all necessary details, registered mail maybe, and if no response within 30 days talk to a lawyer for the next steps.

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This is like saying, if somebody steals my cars, I have to hire a lawyer as there is no police.
This country is a joke.

For an ongoing procedure in Switzerland, you need to have an address in Switzerland in order to get notify by the Court and to have the opportunity to defend yourself. The best would be to take a lawyer, but if you feel enough confident to defend yourself, you need to have an address in Switzerland to get properly notify.

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I would tune out emotions and start with facts. Namely: whats written in the pension regulations? If You don‘t have them, what deductions are mentioned in your pension balance sheet?

A 270 CHF 2nd Pillar Deduction when you in total get CHF 400 of Pension Savings credited
 that does not sound way off.

There may be multiple reasons like: Risk Premium, Administration / Wealth Management Premium, Refunding Surcharge if the Pension was underfunded, 
 the Pension Regulations or Pension Statements will show you how much the employer actually pays.

Besides - the 50/50 is applicable across the pension fund, whilsts it was morally questionable, it could happen that certain profiles (age, cadre, 
) slightly deviate from this.

Conclusion off: Get back to data first, before you do anything that can heavily backfire.

I don’t see the purpose of ranting on this forum.

At this stage, contacting the shareholders wont help.

We dont have access to your payslip, neither your pension fund details/regulations.

There is nothing we can do at the top of what have been written above: contact a lawyer, sending a registered mail to your company with your specific questions and a deadline to respond.

It’s not always fraud when 2 amounts don’t add up.

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While that may be the most common explanation for discrepancies as perceived by laypeople, in this case the above posts as if SD-1990 actually did confirm the overall contributions (including costs and risk premium, not old-age credits only) with his/her pension fund.

Don’t rush to attribute to fraud what can easily be explained by a simple mistake or sheer cluelessness.

I‘m convinced that the great majority of such discrepancies is not due to intentional fraud but just a mistake (though as you said, there are few safeguards in the system to protect against that, except verifying your own pension fund statement - and you or someone has to be competent to do that).

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Agreed, I would be very careful to call it fraud. It could be anything (deduction, managment fees, etc etc).

I would maybe also consult 2-3 insurances and tell them you want to transfer the money to their FreizĂŒgigkeitskonto but you are reluctant because you have concerns about the money. They are experts and would be happy to help as they really understand this topics. You dont have to transfer in the end.

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Wrong. The 50/50 split is only applied to the mandatory part of your 2nd pillar. So lets assume the following numbers: CHF 100’000 salary, CHF 60’945 insured (legal minimum in that case) x 3.5% (as you are 25-34 years old) → CHF 178 per month from your employer. That’s the required legal minimum. So if your contributions would be CHF 400 per month in total, it would be fine if it were 222/178.

Just post your pension fund statement here and I can do the calculation and see if anything is wrong. You can delete your name etc.

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No, the employer has to contribute at least as much as the sum of contributions of all employees. At least collectively over all employees of a company, this also applies to the extra-mandatory part of pillar 2. See OR Art. 331 Abs. 3.

This is confirmed, e.g., here:

GemĂ€ss Art. 331 Abs. 3 Teilsatz 2 OR, der sowohl fĂŒr die obligatori-
sche wie auch fĂŒr die ĂŒberobligatorische Personalvorsorge gilt (JĂŒrg BrĂŒhwiler, Kom-
mentar zum Einzelarbeitsvertrag, 2. A., 1996, Art. 331 N 8)

If this indeed happened as you suspect, this is also punishable here, of course, as per StGB Art. 159

Der Arbeitgeber, der die Verpflichtung verletzt, einen Lohnabzug fĂŒr Steuern, Abgaben, VersicherungsprĂ€mien und ‑beitrĂ€ge oder in anderer Weise fĂŒr Rechnung des Arbeitnehmers zu verwenden, und damit diesen am Vermögen schĂ€digt, wird mit Freiheitsstrafe bis zu drei Jahren oder Geldstrafe bestraft.

In any case, you really need to check the regulations of your pension fund for your pension plan. Based on that (+ your pension fund statement and payslips) you should be able to determine what went wrong. Making a police report may be appropriate at some point but it seems to me, it’s too early for this.

You first need to figure out what exactly happened. At least you haven’t mentioned specifics such as whether your employer deducted more than what is in your pension plan or whether they paid to the pension fund less than what’s in the pension plan (the pension fund should immediately notice that, though). If you want useful help from the forum, post the relevant parts of your pension plan and payslip.

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remember that this applies at a pension foundation level. Ethically, it would be questionable yet it was technically possible to have certain age bands or seniority bands that pay more than 50% of total contributions. Clearly, this was only possible in the extra mandatory part.

No matter what - that is details and the key question is what the pension regulations state and how the latest pension balance / pension report shows. There, employer and employee contributions will become apparent. From what I see here, I strongly tend towards a “this guy just doesn’t understand things and just causes a fuzz out of nothing” situation


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