Notă privind confidențialitatea.

§ 01 Temeiul juridic

Every qualified Swiss attorney — and, by extension, every member of our team acting under their supervision — is bound by professional secrecy under:

• Article 321 of the Swiss Criminal Code (SCC) — breach of professional secrecy is a criminal offence punishable by custodial sentence or fine;
• Article 13 of the Federal Act on the Freedom of Movement for Lawyers (BGFA) — lawyers are bound to absolute secrecy over everything entrusted to them in the exercise of their profession, without time limit;
• The rules of professional conduct of the Baroul Elvețian (SBA/SAV);
• Swiss procedural law — privileged material may not be seized by authorities; a lawyer cannot be compelled to testify on matters covered by secrecy.

§ 02 Ce înseamnă în practică

§ 03 Cine din Valken este obligat

Every person who works on your matter is personally bound by secrecy:

• Admitted attorneys — by Art. 321 SCC and the BGFA;
• Auxiliary staff (assistants, paralegals, IT, accounting) — by Art. 321 SCC as "auxiliary persons" of the attorney, and by individual confidentiality undertakings;
• Consortium lawyers in our 14-city network — each bound by their own local professional-secrecy regime and by a contractual confidentiality agreement with us.

§ 04 How we handle your communications

We treat the transport of information with the same care as its content:

• Encrypted messaging (Signal, ProtonMail, encrypted email, encrypted video) is offered as a default option for every inquiry;
• Swiss-hosted infrastructure for documents, case files and archives;
• Full-disk encryption on all firm devices, with hardware security keys and strict access control;
• Need-to-know access internally — files are opened only by the lawyer in charge and those they explicitly bring in;
• Destruction of draft material and uncontracted-inquiry data on fixed retention schedules.

§ 05 Limitele stricte ale secretului profesional

Swiss professional secrecy is strong, not absolute. The narrow and well-defined exceptions we must respect are:

• Your consent — you may release us from secrecy, in whole or in part, for a specific purpose;
• Statutory exceptions — a small number of Swiss statutes carve out specific situations (for example certain reporting duties under anti-money-laundering law);
• Lifting procedure — in exceptional cases, a lawyer may apply to the competent supervisory authority to be released from secrecy. This is rare, formal, and never casual.

If any limit might apply to your situation, we tell you. We do not hide the edge of our protection — we point to it.

§ 06 Confidentiality vs. data protection

Professional secrecy is a stronger and narrower regime than general data-protection law. For the separate question of how we process your personal data (retention, rights, transfers, cookies), please see our Privacy Policy. In our hands, both regimes apply — and where they differ, the stricter of the two prevails.

§ 07 Contact

For any concern about how your information is being handled, write directly to the partner in charge of your matter, or to privacy@valken.ch. Fiecare sesizare este citită personal de un avocat senior.