US and UK authorities are scrambling to check on possible terrorist links Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab might have to Al Qaeda, particularly in Yemen. He is the man who tried to blow up a Northwest Airlines passenger jet with 300 people aboard 25 December, Christmas Day. Details about his background are gradually surfacing, after it became known that his father, a top banker in Nigeria, warned the US a month ago that he was concerned about his son’s extremist views. The plane he tried to explode was flying from Amsterdam, The Netherlands to Detroit, Michigan in the US.
Update 21 August Miami, Florida, USA (GenevaLunch) - A banker for NZB (Neue Zürcher Bank), Hansruedi Schumacher, and a Geneva and Zurich lawyer, Matthias Rickenbach, both Swiss, were indicted Thursday 20 August in Miami, Florida on charges of conspiring to defraud the US. The two are accused by the US of helping US residents to evade American taxes, including Jeffrey Chernick of New York and John McCarthy of Pasadena, California, two of four UBS clients who recently have been indicted for tax fraud after their names were given to the IRS in February 2009 by the bank, and who turned themselves in.
The two are accused, among other things, of telling “a New York businessman they paid an unnamed Swiss government official a $45,000 bribe for information on whether the businessman’s account would be revealed to US investigators,” Associated Press reports court documents as stating. AP also says the two are in Switzerland and it is not clear if they have US attorneys to represent them.
The New York Times says the new indictments indicate “that the American authorities are starting to pursue smaller players that may have helped Americans hide their money.”
Update 18:05 Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch, agencies and other media) – Cécile Brossard, the murderer of Edouard Stern, has been found guilty by a jury in Geneva of homicide for killing her lover 28 February 2005. The jury will decide Thursday on her sentence, up to 20 years in prison.
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – The drama of the trial of Cécile Brossard for the murder of Edouard Stern in Geneva finished its first day with two surprises. The husband of the accused, a naturopathy doctor in Clarens, Vaud, told the court that he leaned his wife was having an affair with Stern only after the murder. He understood that his wife was the “sexual secretary” for the French banker based in Geneva. At one point she asked him to give a massage to Stern, who was suffering from back problems. Stern later insulted him, calling him a cuckold.
The second surprise of the day was that the million dollars that caused a tug-of-war between Stern and Brossard is still sitting in an account with Credit Suisse in Montreux, earning interest.
The trial is scheduled to run until 19 June.
Swiss news weekly L’Hebdo magazine’s 2 June edition features on its cover the murder trial of Cécile Brossard, accused of killing her lover, wealthy French banker Edouard Stern, in 2007. GenevaLunch, a partner of l’Hebdo, brings you the English version in two parts, with an introduction by GL editor Ellen Wallace.
French version © 2009 l’Hebdo
English version © 2009 GenevaLunch (may not be reproduced in part or whole without written permission). Translation: Sean Ecker
Background: The trial of Cécile Brossard for murdering Edouard Stern opens in Geneva 10 June, and is expected to run to 19 June. With 30 journalists accredited, it will likely remain in the headlines for the length of the trial. She has admitted to murdering her lover, divorced banker Edouard Stern, one of France’s wealthiest men, who was 50 at the time of his death in February 2005. The killing – four gunshots at his luxurious apartment in central Geneva – sparked enormous media interest at the time. The story was a hot mix: money, world travel, an on-again off-again affair he had with a woman 16 years his junior who came from a middle-class small-town French background while he came from generations of banking wealth, and then there was the death scene, with the victim found dressed in a head to toe latex suit that was part of their sadomasochistic sexual games. And then tales of his manipulative behaviour began to eke out, while other observers questioned his killer’s words.
The trial adds to this two well-known lawyers and public curiosity about the woman who committed the crime. Swiss media have already warmed up for the trial: the Tribune de Genève writes of obscure plots, disinformation being spread and swissinfo (in French) relates a tale of passion, power and sex. Suisse Illustré asks, diabolical Mata Hari or fragile woman? TSR, which is putting three journalists on the story, has a video blog to follow the trial.
The story according to L’Hebdo:
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