GENEVA, April 20 (Xinhua) -- A hefty increase in terrorism and international financial crimes in 2017 lifted the number of investigations in the Swiss Attorney General's office to 237 new cases from 190 the year before, the office said Friday.
"The core operational business of the Office of the Attorney General of Switzerland once again focused on dealing with major case complexes related to international white-collar crime and resource-intensive proceedings in connection with jihadist terrorism," said the report.
A total of 478 cases were ongoing at the end of the year, up 8 percent on the previous year.
Complex economic crime cases included scandals related to Brazilian oil giant Petrobras, the fund connected to the Malaysian government's development company 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB), and attributions to the global football governing body FIFA of broadcasting rights for the World Cup, said the report.
In the Petrobras case alone, more than one billion Swiss francs (1.03 billion U.S. dollars) were confiscated, the report says.
Attorney General Michael Lauber told a press conference on Friday that a Swiss bank was also under investigation in the Petrobras case, and others could follow.
He did not name the bank, reported Swissinfo, the website of the Swiss national broadcaster.
A total of 17 new terrorism cases were opened last year.
The report said this shows that the threat of terrorism is not diminishing "despite the military defeat of the Islamic State" and the cases handled in 2017 were strongly transnational in nature, implicating numerous suspects from Syrian and Iraqi extremist networks.
On cyber crime, Lauber told the press conference that his office was making progress on establishing a special center on cyber crime and that the first steps were expected this year.
His office has already taken on more prosecutors specialized in this field.
