Mathieu Parreaux claims FINMA knew since day one
Conflict of Interest disclaimer: the author has resided in Switzerland, he has taken the Swiss citizenship oath and, from time to time, been party to legal and contractual relationships involving parties referenced in the JuristGate reports. The nature of these relationships is often declared within the research reports although we can't rule out the possibility some relationships or influences have not been explicitly itemized within every report.
In an extraordinary final LinkedIn post about the closure of his illegal legal insurance venture, the founder, Mathieu Parreaux claimed the Swiss financial regulator, FINMA, was aware of his business since the very beginning of the partnership structure in 2018. In other words, he alleges FINMA knew about it for five years.
To clarify, Mathieu Parreaux had originally created the business using the name Parreaux & Associés in October 2016. This name appears on LinkedIn but it was not in the business register. In 2018, he recruited the business partner Francois Thiébaud and formed the new entity Parreaux, Thiébaud SNC approximately eight weeks after Thiébaud had closed his previous business, a massage parlour in Le Locle.
LinkedIn alleges that Parreaux's final post has been edited a number of times. I attach a screenshot taken on 7 October 2025.
In paragraph five, Parreaux has written "After five years of discussions", implying that FINMA has been aware of his business and discussing it with him for five years.
My understanding of financial services is that anybody who wants to operate an investment or insurance scheme needs to obtain their licenses and permits before accepting the first payment from a customer. But I am not a jurist like Mathieu Parreaux, so what would I know?
Parreaux confirms that 20,000 clients were impacted. He claims that the government doesn't care about the clients, which included my own business the Software Freedom Institute.
He claims to care about the interests of clients and offers to "support them until the end, at our own expense". He does not share any financial information about assets and running costs of the business so we can not determine whether this proposition was credible or not.
Then again, FINMA only published their side of the story more than six months later, they redacted over ninety percent of paragraphs and they even redacted the dates and company names from the judgment. Therefore, the information that was eventually disclosed from FINMA is not sufficient for anybody to know who is right and who is wrong.
Here is a translation of Parreaux's final LinkedIn post in English:
The inside story of a true scandal... Here is the story of a Swiss man currently shocked by a country he loves with all his heart.
For five years, through Justicia SA, we have been offering a legal product that democratizes access to the law. The concept is simple: you pay a legal subscription of a few hundred francs on average, and our firm's services are available to you without any additional charges or service exclusions.
A mini-revolution for the legal field and the billing method.
A huge revolution for the legal insurance sector, which we have tackled head-on.
After five years of discussions, FINMA sent us a letter containing a decision to immediately close our company because it deemed us to be an insurance company and that we did not comply with certain conditions related to this activity.
While this is perfectly conceivable, FINMA gives us no deadline to comply with these conditions. Incredibly, FINMA also removes any suspensive effect on any legal action.
This means they're deciding that their decision is immediate, and that even if we win an appeal in two years, everything will have been reduced to dust, leaving us with nothing but a possible "Sorry, guys! You can start all over again."
It gets even worse. The approximately 20,000 clients we currently represent are left without assistance. With a complete shutdown of our business, our government doesn't care about these thousands of clients who are currently in need.
A profoundly humane choice would have been, at the very least, to order a closure in a year, at the end of the clients' contractual period, so that we could support them until the end, at our own expense.
We are dealing with a total disregard not only for innovative companies, but also for individuals who need our assistance.
When we weigh these facts against our state's tolerance for companies that are rotten to the core, one thing stands out: in our democracy, the rotten giants will always fare better than the innovative little ones.
Despite these events, this allows us to fill the gaps that existed. With our motivation, our determination, and our influential partners, we will return.
We will return. More numerous. More motivated. Stronger.
Conflict of Interest disclaimer: the author has resided in Switzerland, he has taken the Swiss citizenship oath and, from time to time, been party to legal and contractual relationships involving parties referenced in the JuristGate reports. The nature of these relationships is often declared within the research reports although we can't rule out the possibility some relationships or influences have not been explicitly itemized within every report.