The Penal Code (StGB) of the Principality of Liechtenstein, enacted on 24 June 1987, will celebrate its 40th anniversary on 24 June 2027. On this occasion, the Chair of Economic Criminal Law, Compliance, and Digitalization is organizing a commemorative event, the highlight of which will be the presentation of a scholarly commentary on the Liechtenstein StGB. This will be the first comprehensive scientific work on this code in Liechtenstein, providing a central reference both for legal practice and for academic discourse. Due to the limited sources available in Liechtenstein, the commentary is conducted with reference to Austrian literature and case law. Particular attention, however, is given to Liechtenstein-specific features in order to reinforce the national criminal law identity. The commentary systematically covers all sections of the StGB (as well as the Criminal Law Adaptation Act [StRAG] of 20 May 1987) and will be published both as a book and online via the Austrian legal database RDB. The project represents an independent scholarly contribution to the development of criminal law. To date, no scientific commentary on a code exists in Liechtenstein, and criminal law research has been conducted only to a very limited extent compared with other areas of law. The commentary thus assumes a pioneering role.

This research project analyses international tax framework for Investment, wealth, and philanthropy hubs, particularly in small, highly developed, high-income jurisdictions. The aim is to identify success factors for competitive tax design in line with international Standards such as OECD-BEPS, the EU Code of Conduct, and GloBE. The project focuses on legal and tax conditions for operating Companies, foundations, trusts, family Offices, and charitable entities. Liechtenstein is studied in international comparison to derive actionable recommendations for strengthening its positioning as a competitive hub.

This project explores how taxation can be integrated into environmental, social, and governance (ESG) reporting frameworks, and how technology can support this process. While tax transparency has become an increasingly important topic in global debates, the absence of a clear regulatory framework means that most multinational enterprises (MNEs) disclose tax strategies in voluntary and unstructured ways. Only a few jurisdictions, such as the UK and Australia, require mandatory disclosure, whereas in the EU, Switzerland, and Liechtenstein, such reporting remains largely volun-tary.
This project addresses two interconnected areas. First, it examines how tax is positioned within ESG reporting and the extent to which companies integrate tax-related information into their non-financial disclosures. As investors and regulators increasingly expect businesses to embed tax governance into sustainability strategies, the project aims to clarify the role and weight of taxation within ESG frameworks and to identify best practices in corporate reporting. Particular attention will be paid to the drivers of tax and ESG reporting, and to insights from previous research on corporate tax disclosures in the DACH region.
Second, the project investigates how digitalisation can shape the future of ESG and tax reporting. Multinationals are under growing pressure to collect, verify, and disclose vast amounts of both financial and non-financial data. In this context, technology plays a central role in ensuring accuracy, comparability, and timeliness. The project explores how advanced tools such as artificial intelligence, blockchain, and other software solutions can help companies structure disclosures more effectively, enhance transparency, and transform tax governance from a compliance activity into a forward-looking strategic function.

Regulation (EU) 2023/1114 (Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation, MiCAR) establishes, for the first time, a unified European legal framework for crypto-assets and related service providers. It
specifically governs the issuance, public offering, and admission of crypto-assets to trading, and sets binding requirements for providers of crypto-asset services. The primary aim of the regulation is to ensure market integrity, strengthen investor protection, and establish a risk-appropriate regulatory framework for the digital financial sector. A particularly relevant area of application concerns crypto-asset trading platforms, which serve as central infrastructures of the crypto market. For Liechtenstein, as a member of the European Economic Area (EEA) and thus obligated to incorporate MiCAR, a national pre-implementation was adopted with the EEA-MiCA Implementation Act (EWR-MiCA-DG) of 5 December 2024. This act includes, in particular, criminal and administrative provisions to ensure compliance with the MiCAR framework. The proposed research project focuses on the criminal law dimension of this implementation. Central to the analysis are the sanction-related provisions of the EWR-MiCA-DG, namely: breach of confidentiality and unauthorized activities (Art. 26), insider trading and unlawful disclosure of insider information (Art. 27), market manipulation (Art. 28), as well as numerous administrative offences (Art. 31). The project aims to provide a systematic, doctrinally sound and practice-oriented analysis of these criminal provisions in the context of Liechtenstein’s economic and criminal law.

With the consultation period ending on 27 May 2024, the Government of Liechtenstein published the consultation report on the creation of a new Administrative Penal Act (VStG). The objective is a comprehensive reform of the administrative penal procedure in Liechtenstein, which is currently governed by the outdated and difficult-to-understand Law on General Public Administration Procedures (LVG) from 1922. In particular, complex administrative penal proceedings in the financial sector are to be transferred to a transparent and modern legal framework. Since nearly every substantive law contains penal provisions - mostly concerning administrative offences - the new Administrative Penal Act represents a key element for the effective application and enforcement of the law in Liechtenstein. On 5 November 2024, the government adopted Government Bill 2024/148, which was discussed in the first reading in Parliament on 6 December 2024. In response to questions that were either not addressed or not fully clarified during the first reading, the government provided further comments in Government Bill 2025/18 of 15 April 2025. In light of the upcoming second reading and given the expected imminent entry into force of the Administrative Penal Act, the proposed project aims to analyse the key regulatory areas of the VStG and to prepare the affected stakeholders - particularly employees in various roles and the responsible authorities - for the new legal framework. The project examines, on an overarching level, the interactions between legal frameworks, societal responsibility, and sustainable administrative practices.

The Liechtenstein General Civil Code (ABGB) was adopted in 1812, following the Austrian role model. After World War I, Liechtenstein adjusted its economy towards Switzerland, which also led to an adaptation of private law to the Swiss legal system. In this process, property law as well as parts of personal and corporate law were incorporated, the latter also containing Liechtenstein-specific legal innovations. However, attempts to reform the law of obligations, inheritance law, and family law failed, resulting in a private law system that remains to this day a hybrid of Swiss and Austrian legal influences. Since Liechtenstein’s accession to the European Economic Area (EEA) in 1995, European legislation has also been gaining increasing influence.

At the same time, legislation can never comprehensively regulate all legal matters, as this would lead to an unmanageable expansion of legal texts. Legal systems within the continental European legal tradition address this issue through the use of general clauses. These legal norms are formulated in broad terms and require further concretization through case law and legal scholarship. From a legal-theoretical perspective, this is referred to as gaps intra legem, meaning that no true legislative gap exists, as a general clause-like provision can still be applied. However, resolving legal questions in such cases is only possible if the general clause is substantiated by judicial interpretation and value judgments. In addition to statutory law and case law-based legal doctrines, fundamental rights may also serve as a means to interpret and apply general clauses.

This research project aims to examine the function and impact of such general clauses in Liechtenstein’s private law.

The custody and management of assets plays a crucial role for investors and service providers: on the one hand, assets on the financial market (especially securities) are held almost exclusively via intermediaries. On the other hand, many financial services cannot be provided at all without the simultaneous safekeeping of assets. In order to protect investors and the market, strict regulatory requirements traditionally apply to the custody of financial instruments. In addition, private law ensures that investors have a secure legal position. With the growing importance of digital markets, crypto assets (DLT financial instruments and other crypto assets) are now increasingly being held in custody. Compared to traditional securities, they have various special features that need to be addressed by the law. The importance of effective regulations in this area is demonstrated, for example, by the crash of the FTX crypto exchange, in which customers lost access to crypto assets worth more than USD 8 billion.

The custody of traditional securities is subject to a complex regulatory environment consisting of European supervisory law and national private law. In the area of crypto assets, the legal framework for custody is now largely influenced by the 'Pilot Regime for Market Infrastructures based on DLT', the 'Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation' and the 'Token and TT Service Provider Act'. The research project aims to analyse differences between the custody of traditional securities and crypto assets and examine selected legal issues relating to the protection of client assets.

At the time the Persons and Companies Act (PGR) was created, Liechtenstein was experiencing a challenging economic situation due to the events of the First World War and was in urgent need of capital. Consequently, the country sought to strengthen its economic and legal ties with Switzerland, with a view to establishing a new, innovative company law. In conjunction with a liberal tax law, Liechtenstein's legislators wanted to make the Principality more attractive to foreign investors. The PGR, which came into force in 1926, therefore contains a diverse range of legal forms that are intended to provide every interested investor with a suitable company form or asset structure that is specifically tailored to their needs. With regard to Liechtenstein legal forms for asset structuring, the foundation and the trust should be mentioned in particular. The enduring popularity of these structures is underscored by the latest figures, which show that approximately 9,500 foundations and around 1,600 trusts are currently registered in Liechtenstein.
Following a period of stability, there are now extensive national reform efforts underway to update the rules governing foundations and trusts. These primarily concern control and supervision, as well as the associated intervention in a closed, self-regulating system. On the one hand, the government of the Principality of Liechtenstein adopted a consultation report in November 2023 on the optimisation of trust law, in which far-reaching legal amendments are proposed. The planned changes relate in particular to trust governance. The proposal's key points include the introduction of a mandatory information officer (enforcer), amendments to the provisions on judicial supervision, the catalogue of supervisory measures, the right to file an application and party status in supervisory proceedings, and the subordination of charitable trusteeships to the supervision of the foundation supervisory authority. On the other hand, following the total revision of foundation law that took place in 2008, a targeted improvement of the existing standards is also being considered. Adjustments are to be expected in particular with regard to the beneficiaries' rights of inspection and information, supervision and the prevention of legal disputes between the parties involved in the foundation.
From a comparative legal perspective, the two legal forms of foundation and trust are also subject to regulatory influences at the European level. In this context, the possibilities for the Liechtenstein financial centre to position itself and stand out in international competition must be examined. The objective of the research project is to subject the planned national legislative changes to a scientific analysis, to place them in an international context and, finally, to analyse them in a comparative legal context. In addition, the
European influences on other legal forms of asset structuring, such as corporations as family pools or holding companies, will also be assessed.

Information and communication technologies (ICT) play a crucial role in the availability and integrity of financial services. Regulation (EU) 2022/2554 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 14 December 2022 on digital operational resilience in the financial sector (DORA) aims to enable financial institutions to withstand cyberattacks and maintain operations even in the event of such an attack. The DORA came into force on 16 January 2023 and its requirements must be implemented by the affected financial intermediaries in the EU by 17 January 2025. According to Art. 2 DORA, the scope of application includes credit, payment and e-money institutions, providers of crypto services, investment firms, management companies, trade repositories and insurance companies. DORA contains standardised requirements for the risk management of ICT, the handling, classification and reporting of ICT-related incidents, the testing of digital operational resilience, the management of ICT third-party risk and the exchange of information. In Liechtenstein, the DORA applies directly following its incorporation into the EEA Agreement; however, some provisions required national implementation, for which the EEA DORA-DG was created. This is due to enter into force on 1 February 2025. The penal provisions are anchored in Art. 9 DORA-DG, with para. 1 in particular providing for an offence punishable by a court (misdemeanour) and para. 2 regulating several administrative offences sanctioned by the FMA; all penal provisions are so-called blanket penal provisions because they refer to provisions of the DORA and their unlawful content can only be recognised by reading them together with the corresponding so-called filling standards. The project analyses these two paragraphs and aims to draw attention to the new criminal liability risks in good time before the planned entry into force. The area of cybercrime, for whose defence cyber resilience is an essential strategy, is explained in advance.

Many jurisdictions grant tax incentives providing tax relief to particular industries or activities in pursuit of a variety of goals. Soon, such domestic measures will coincide with the OECD/G20 framework on global minimum taxation of multinational enterprise groups (GloBE), which has been agreed upon by more than 135 jurisdictions worldwide. The agreement stipulates a mini-mum tax rate of 15%, provided that the effective tax level in a jurisdiction where the corporate group is active falls below this threshold. Whenever tax incentives push the effective tax burden below this threshold or exacerbate pre-existing low levels of taxation, the GloBE Rules will apply. These, however, do not provide for a homogenous treatment of all types of tax incentives when calculating the amount of jurisdictional Top-up Tax due. Instead, they will impact different tax incentives in different ways, with the extent of this effect largely depending on the design of the stimulus. The fact that some variants of tax incentives are less susceptible to Top-up Taxation under GloBE provides considerable leeway for fiscal policy action. We aim to explore this fiscal headroom by analysing the implications of GloBE on tax incentive design. Based on a presentation of the critical aspects of GloBE with regard to the treatment of tax incentives under this set of rules, we intend to model the impact of GloBE on the effectiveness of various tax incentives using a quasi-empirical Effective Average Tax Rate (EATR) methodology.In doing so, we refer to specific examples of tax incentives subject to current reform endeavours in several jurisdictions against the background of the "new normal" baseline MNE tax rate of 15%.