Maurer had been proposed last month by the IOC Executive Board to succeed his compatriot Samuel Schmid on the nine-member Ethics Commission chaired by former United Nations secretary general Ban Ki-moon.

He was approved in a postal ballot, with 74 members voting in favour, one abstaining and none opposing.

There are currently 99 members of the IOC, of whom four in Pierre-Olivier Beckers-Vieujant, Laura Chinchilla, Auvita Rapilla and Pau Gasol serve on the Ethics Commission.

Maurer joins Ban, Patricia O'Brien, Hanqin Xue and Amina Mohamed as independent members of the body established in 1999 following the Salt Lake City 2002 bribery scandal "to safeguard the ethical principles of the Olympic Movement" laid out in the Code of Ethics.

Maurer's four-year term on the Commission officially began on January 1.

He served on the Swiss Federal Council, the executive body of the country which serves as the collective head of state, from 2009 until the end of 2022.

The 72-year-old is an accountant by profession, and his last role on the Federal Council was as Minister of Finance from 2016.

He held the Council Presidency, a first among equals position, in 2013 and 2019.

He was present at the inauguration of Olympic House in Lausanne in 2019 in his capacity as President of the Swiss Confederation.

Prior to that, Maurer supported Lausanne's successful bid to stage the 2020 Winter Youth Olympic Games, attending the 128th Session in Kuala Lumpur in 2015, where it comfortably beat a bid from Brașov in Romania.

Schmid, Maurer's predecessor on the Ethics Commission, is also a former Swiss Federal Council member from 2001 to 2008, and served as President in 2005.

The IOC Ethics Commission has not communicated any decision since clearing FIFA President Gianni Infantino of wrongdoing in February 2021 following claims he had breached the Olympic Charter.

Before that in November 2020, it cleared World Triathlon President Marisol Casado during the International Federation's election after she was accused of having committed "gross and multiple violations of the values, principles and regulations" of the Olympic Charter.

Infantino and Casado are both IOC members.

The IOC has so far refused to comment on the legal finding of an Independent Panel earlier this month which found its vice-president Ng Ser Miang guilty of failing to act with integrity and of interfering in a bitter World Sailing election in 2020.

Ng has rejected the findings of the Panel.