Former Swiss Life finance director’s sentence cut to 22 months, suspended
Geneva gripped by court case over couple’s involvement in girlfriend’s death
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – A judge in Sion this week sentenced the driver of a van that crashed into a military vehicle on the A9 autoroute to 22 months in prison, going beyond the public prosecutor’s request for 18 months in prison and a 5-year suspended sentence. The accident took the lives of two of the driver’s fellow workers, both Portuguese, one age 62 and the other age 21. It also left three people injured, one of them, a 22-year-old Valais worker, who was left in critical condition.
The van crashed into a military vehicle that was stopped in the emergency lane of the A9 autoroute near Vernayaz in October 2010. The driver was over the legal alcohol limit. The judge, in passing the sentence, noted that he had already been condemned in 2002 for drunk driving and in 2004 he had killed a cyclist while driving although no alcohol was involved, according to Le Nouvelliste. The judge also noted that the man had falsely claimed at one point during the trial that one of his victims had been driving the van.
He gave up drinking only two months ago and had shown little remorse towards his victims, the judge added.
Several other court cases around the country are making headlines this week, including:
Zurich, Swiss Life, Dominique Morax, former head of finances for Swiss Life, saw his sentence reduced from 30 to 22 months for swindling the company’s directors in a 2002 deal; he was sentenced in 2010 but appealed.
Geneva, a court is hearing arguments that the owner of an Italian trucking firm should be charged with negligent homicide, in addition to his driver, for the death in March 2011 of a 20-year-old scooter rider. The driver, Serbian, was obliged by his boss to driver longer than the legally permitted number of hours, the victim’s family argues.
Vaud, the court is hearing arguments that the death of local councillor Catherine Ségalat in Vaux-sur-Morges was murder, while her stepson Laurent Ségalat’s lawyers say her fatal fall down a flight of stairs was an accident. Much depends on testimony from witnesses, some of whom say there was “tension” between the pair and others who say not. The politician died in January 2010.
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – Apple will email Australian buyers of its newest iPad models with an offer to refund their purchases after a consumer group sued the company for misleading advertising.
The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission said Tuesday 27 March that the electronics giant misinformed consumers that the latest “iPad with wifi and 4G” will work in Australia, not the case because it is not compatible with either of the 4G networks available in the country.
A lawyer for the company, Colin Golvan, reportedly told an Australian court that Apple will notify consumers that the latest iPad is not compatible with Australian 4G LTE networks and WiMAX networks in the coming week.
On Wednesday afternoon Apple’s Australian website was still advertising its newest iPad as being 4G compatible. The iPad launched earlier in March in Australian stores.
Links to other sources: Aljazeera, Financial Times, Bloomberg, Sydney Morning Herald, Vancouver Sun, The West Australian
Debris from the May 2010 Deepwater Horizon rig disaster and oil spill
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – Oil company BP late Friday 2 March reached an out of court settlement with the Plaintiffs’ Steering Committee for the 2010 Gulf oil disaster, the worst in US history, to pay $7.8 billion, mainly to fishermen, small businesses and condo owners near Gulf oil spill in 2010. A court case against the company was scheduled to open Monday but has been delayed as a result of the new deal.
BP says it has already spent about $22 billion: “more than $8.1 billion to individuals, businesses and government entities. In addition, BP has spent approximately $14 billion on operational response.”
The Guardian in the UK reports that “Hundreds of lawyers for all parties were involved in preparing for the trial – and in parallel negotiations to try to get a settlement. There were 340 lawyers from 90 different firms working on the plaintiffs’ side alone. The deal between BP and more than 120,000 victims of the spill – from shrimp boat captains to sales teams at time-share condos, restaurateurs and wedding planners – settles what is arguably the most complicated part of the legal proceedings.”
The court case looks beyond damages to settle blame. The BBC reports that “the trial will probably still go ahead in order to apportion blame for the spill among BP and its fellow defendants. Other companies involved include Transocean, who owned the rig, and Halliburton. All the companies are in dispute with each other over their liability to each other.”
The Houston Chronicle’s business columnist Loren Steffy in a blog today notes that “the complex court proceeding BP faces as early as Monday is unlike anything it – or most other companies – has faced before. The case is bigger than the litigation that followed the Exxon Valdez spill, and it’s more unwieldy in many ways than even the multistate litigation with tobacco companies more than a decade ago.”
BERN, SWITZERLAND – Sion Football Club lost another round in its legal dispute with the Swiss Football Assocation, which docked it 36 points for breaking regulations. A Bern regional (Mitteland) court has ruled in favour of the association, which leaves the club at the bottom of the nine-team Swiss top division.
Sion FC, reports Sports Illustrated, “flouted rules by trying to register six players signed during a transfer embargo imposed by FIFA because the club’s 2008 signing of goalkeeper Essam el Hadary breached regulations.”
But the judge, in his decision, notes that the SFA broke its own rules and overstepped the limits of its own statutes by stripping the club of 36 points, reports Le Nouvelliste in canton Valais. The SFA acknowledged the ruling but says it will not comment further, which FC Sion points out on its own web site. The judge nevertheless refused to provisionally restore the points.
The club says it will now appeal to the Bern cantonal court, noting the urgency of restoring the points in order to have a “normal” championship.
Basel’s Xamax club just declared bankruptcy, reducing the division’s ranks.
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – A Canadian couple and their 19-year-old son were found guilty Monday 30 January of murdering the youth’s three sisters and his father’s first wife from a polygamous marriage, but the story is far from over. The young man’s lawyer says he is appealing the judgement, and the other two may also appeal.
The trio was found guilty of murder in what the court agreed was an honour killing because the girls had become too Westernized. But the Afghan community in Montreal, according to The Globe & Mail, is not convinced a crime took place, with questions raised about whether the deaths by drowning in a car could have been an accident. “Some in Montreal’s small Afghan community of about 5,000 people condemn the crime, while others have trouble with the verdict”, reports the newspaper.
The deaths came as the wedding of the oldest daughter, Zainab Shafia, was called off in a dispute between two families. Her father, found guilty of her murder, had not approved the marriage, but was ready to let it go ahead. When the family of her fiance failed to show up, her father reportedly said it brought shame on the family’s honour.
PARIS, FRANCE – French writer Tristane Banon is having a big week, with her latest novel out and her criminal court case against former IMF head Dominique Strauss-Kahn (DSK) dropped by prosecutors after the initial investigation.
First the book: a thinly veiled autobiographical “novel” called The Hypocrites’ Ball was published in France Thursday 13 October and reviewers are scrambling to highlight the negative passages that refer to DSK without naming him.
Second, the court case: French public prosecutors dropped the criminal case against DSK Thursday after determining that there is not enough evidence to convict him of attempted rape in 2003, a crime whose 10-year statute of limitations is not yet up. They said there was, however, evidence of “acts that could be qualified as sexual aggression”, with DSK admitting to trying to embrace Banon; the statute of limitations for such crimes is only three years, however, so charges could not be filed.
Banon says she will file civil charges, as the hotel maid in the US did after the rape case she brought against DSK was dropped. She called Thursday’s decision a “first victory” in that DSK stands accused of sexual aggression based on evidence.
Links to other sites: Guardian, Le Monde (Fre), Liberation (Fre), Time
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – Media in the Italy, Britain and the US are heavily covering the release from prison of Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito, following the judge’s decision in Italy to overturn their murder convictions in the November 2007 death of Meredith Kercher. Coverage of the trial and release continue to follow national lines, with American media often portraying Knox as an innocent victim, British media emphasizing the prosecution’s description of her as a liar with a split personality, and Italy media incensed that their justice system is being called faulty by Americans.
Knox sobbed as she left the courtroom. Sollecito’s father gave an emotional TV interview outside. And Kercher’s family quietly left, telling journalists briefly of their disappointment, appearing stunned by the verdict. They will give a press conference later today.
Rudy Guede, 24, from Cote d’Ivoire, was also accused of the murder in a separate trial and his appeal was upheld although he, too, claims innocence.
A fourth person involved in the court case, bar owner Patrick Lumumba, was once Knox’s employer, and while under interrogation she accused him of the murder. He was detained for two weeks based on her evidence. Know was found guilty 3 October of slander and was sentenced to three years, which she has served, and ordered to pay him several thousand dollars. Knox is likely to quickly sign an agreement worth at least $1 million with a US television network, according to Britain’s Sky News.
Links to other sites: Guardian, UK, Seattle PI, Sky News, Zimbio images
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – A house maid in Hong Kong has won a court case that gives her the right to apply for permanent residency, boosting the status of domestic workers. Foreigners may apply for residence in Hong Kong after working there for seven years, with the exception of domestic help, who until now have not had the right to apply.
Opponents have voiced concerns that the island’s housing, education and health care systems cannot support the additional number of residents. The BBC reports that there are about 300,000 domestic workers, and that more than one-third of them have lived there for more than seven years. ABC Radio in Australia reports that the government will appeal.
ZURICH, SWITZERLAND – A 27-year-old woman who in 2006 shook a child to death, has been given a 10-year-prison sentence. She is the third person involved in a child abuse case that involved her partner and his other female companion and three of the man’s children. They were all living together as a group with religious convictions, with the man dictating severe punishments that eventually led to the incident where one of the children died.
The man and his other partner were earlier sentenced to 9.5 and 7 years for their part in the string of abuses.
TSR notes that a Swiss study showed in 2008 that there had been eight deaths and 50 hospitalizations in five years for shaking babies and young children, with the public not fully aware of the damage that can be caused to a young child by shaking it.
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – A man who spent the evening with a woman who drowned just one metre from the shore in front of the Hotel President Wilson in Geneva in July 2010 has been cleared by a judge of any involvement in the woman’s death, reports the Tribune de Geneve Wednesday 3 August.
The two had met 18 hours earlier, been lovers for the day, and the man was unable to convince the woman not to go in the lake after she had consumed large amounts of alcohol. The woman had recently left a clinic where she was treated for drug and alcohol dependency and the judge accepted the defendant’s argument that he could not have known the extent of the risk she was taking. He was unable to save her himself and phoned French emergency services; he lives in France.
A rescue team arrived but too late: the woman drowned in less than two metres of water.
BERN, SWITZERLAND – The European Court of Human Rights Friday 8 July ruled that two cases brought against Switzerland are “inadmissable”: the Swiss popular vote against the construction of new minarets does not directly violate the rights of those who filed complaints with the court in December 2009.
Switzerland voted against the construction of new minarets, a vote that had no impact on the existing five, in November 2009. Two weeks later charges were brought by Hafid Ouardiri, co-president of the Geneva-based Fondation de l’entre-connaissance, and by the Swiss League of Muslims.
Court’s judgement (Fre)
Annecy, France (GenevaLunch) - France will try two of its citizens on attempted murder and other charges stemming from an October 2009 fight outside a disco in Martigny, canton Valais in Switzerland. The attorney general in Valais, Patrick Burkhalter, said Tuesday 26 April that close work by French and Swiss authorities led to the arrest of one of the accused in Geneva in May 2010 and the second in Annemasse, France in June 2010.
The two men, aged 21 and 24 at the time, will now face charges in front of the Grand Tribunal d’Instance in Annecy, with the man arrested in Geneva extradited for the case. The two have admitted to the facts, say Valais police, who have now closed their file and turned over their information to French judicial authorities.
The fight broke out at 04:00 outside a disco, where one of the accused knifed a victim while the other intentionally drove a car into a group of six people, injuring them.
Lausanne, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - The death of a popular local Swiss politician in July 2010 shocked the Morges region when her step-son, a well-known geneticist, was taken in for questioning in relationship to her death, charges he vehemently denied.
Medical examiners in Paris, France, who were given access to all the evidence, have declared the woman’s death “accidental”, TSR television has learned.
An Australian court is hearing the case of a father who threw his four-year-old daughter off the Melbourne West Gate Bridge in January 2009, shortly after phoning his ex-wife to tell her she would never see their children again. The jury is faced with deciding if the father was “mad”, too mentally impaired at the time to be responsible for his actions, or if he was a “bad” father. Two other children, ages 2 and 6, were found with him soon after the crime, the facts of which he does not contest.
He was delivering the children to school and a creche when he pulled over on the bridge. Motorists immediately stopped to scan the water below, and emergency services pulled her out of the water but she died four hours later from the effects of being in the water, and multiple injuries.
Links to other sites: The Age, Herald Sun
Google publishes the locations where it is filming: while the court case is heard in Bern, Google Street View crews are out in cantons Ticino, Valais and Zurich Thursday
Bern, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – A Swiss high court today will hear the case for Google’s widely popular Street Views, which have been the subject of a legal tangle in Switzerland almost since the company began publishing them in August 2009. The court will have a full house for the 10:00 hearing, with all seats reserved.
The government and Google in December 2009 reached an agreement limiting the use of Street Views in Switzerland until the case could be heard by the high court.
The Swiss Federal Administrative Tribunal, one of Switzerland’s three high courts, Thursday 24 February hears “A-7040/2009, Google Street View”, brought by the federal data protection and information commissioner against Google Inc. and Google Switzerland.
Today Google will argue 10 reasons why Street Views should be allowed in Switzerland, with the emphasis on equal treatment: its street views provide no more information than images carried by Internet media of people and places or, for that matter, the company argues, the federal government web site.
Its case will be watched carefully because of court cases in other countries, with Canada and Australia among the countries where Google has had legal problems over Street View.
Its other arguments include:
(video) Italy’s Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, whose parties and relations with women have kept the Italian media busy writing hot headlines in recent years, will have to face a courtroom judge 6 April on charges he paid for sex with a minor. He denies having paid for sex with her, and she denies having sex with him, saying only that he gave her gifts when she attended a party he threw.
These appear to be “some of the most serious allegations Mr Berlusconi has faced during his long career,” reports the BBC, and Berlusconi could face 15 years in prison if found guilty. But whatever the outcome, Italian media will have a field day: Karima El Mahroug, called Ruby, now 18, is a beautiful Moroccan nightclub dancer. And Berlusconi claims he was doing her a favour when he called the police after she was in trouble with them because he understood she was the granddaughter of then-Egyptian leader Hosni Mubarak.
Italian polls show his popularity falling, with Darma TV noting that while Italians understood his love of beautiful women, paying for sex with minors is not acceptable.
Links to other sites: Guardian, Telegraph, Time
Darma TV video
Bern, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Switzerland’s new law covering potentate funds, dictator’s assets frozen in Swiss banks, goes into effect 1 February 2011. The first beneficiary of what is called the Restitution of Illicit Assets Act is likely to be Haiti, which is scheduled to receive CHF6 million that have been frozen since Jean-Claude Duvalier, known as Baby Doc, fled the country in 1986.
Baby Doc’s surprising return to Haiti 17 January has provoked questions about why he would risk prosecution, and one of the suggestions put forward is that he hopes to keep the Swiss from returning money his family stashed in Swiss banks. The Duvaliers fought long and hard to force Switzerland to unfreeze their assets, saying these were legally gained. Baby Doc’s notoriously expensive lifestyle and divorce in France have sparked rumours that he is short of money.
Switzerland has struggled to keep the funds out of the Duvalier clan‘s hands for several years, cobbled by its own laws that said funds could be returned only if a country asks for judicial assistance once the dictator is gone. Haiti’s plight, a country too poor and disorganized to ask for help, underlined the shortcomings of the law.
The new law, passed in October 2010 (text), will, under certain circumstances, make it possible to return funds to a country that has not been able to follow the normal international legal path to demand their return.
Duvalier, whose motives for returning to Haiti remain a mystery, now faces charges of fraud and embezzlement.
Links to other sites: BBC, France24/AFP, New York Times
Couples have four family name options when they marry in Switzerland, but the European Court may change this
Bern, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - The Swiss government has been told by the European Court of Human Rights to pay a Swiss-Hungarian couple €10,000 in damages and reimburse them €4,515 in legal costs for discrimination against dual national couples. The two have been fighting Swiss marriage laws that prevented both of them from keeping their original family names.
The couple, who live in canton Bern, took their case to the European Court after a Swiss high court refused to overturn a ruling by the canton. The European court’s decision in the case, Losonci Rose and Rose v. Switzerland, is not final, but Switzerland has not said if it will appeal.
The man is Hungarian and the woman has Swiss and French nationalities. Both are over age 55. They argued that changing their names in France and Hungary would be too difficult, and she also argued that as a senior administrator in the Swiss federal government she is well known under the name she had before her marriage, so she should not be required to change her name. The two decided that he would take her name but the law stipulates that it must be added after his own. She kept her name, unchanged, when they married in 2003.
Problems arose when he tried to use the name Losonci alone.
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – The Abacha family has taken the Nigerian government to court over a case involving the trial in Switzerland of one of the sons of former dictator Sani Abacha.
Abba Abacha, who was found guilty in Geneva in November 2009 of belonging to a criminal organization, and his brother Mohammed, said Wednesday 10 June that statements they made to the Nigerian government’s Special Investigation Panel, which were then used in Swiss courts, were obtained illegally, reports Punch Nigeria.
The brothers say they were not informed of their rights, and that they were not told the information was being sought for use outside the country, for court cases in Jersey, the Authorities of Leichtenstein, United Kingdom, Luxembourg, France, the Bahamas and Switzerland.
“But the Federal Government, in its defense, had challenged the competence of the suit, describing it as “frivolous, utterly baseless and completely misconceived,” reports Punch, a daily newspaper in Nigeria.
Background story, GenevaLunch
A court in Belgium will rule on a case brought by a Congolese man to ban sales in the country of the 1920s book by cartoonist Hergé, Tintin in the Congo. The book has long been criticized for its racist images and dialogue, and even the cartoonist referred to it years later as “a youthful sin which reflected the prejudices of the time”, according to the BBC. The UK’s Commission for Racial Equality at one point asked for the book to be banned, but it is now often sold in Britain with a wrapper saying the contents may be offensive.
Film director’s request to remain outside the US turned down by California court
Bern, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - Film director Roman Polanski’s request to stay in Switzerland while his 30-year-old court case is concluded was turned down by a California appeals court Thursday, without the court issuing an opinion. He fled the US before he was sentenced in 1978 on a charge of unlawful sexual intercourse. He was arrested at Zurich airport in September 2009 after the US made a new extradition request.
Switzerland must now decide if it will extradite him, but if he is sentenced to less than six months he is unlikely to be extradited, the justice ministry in Bern noted in March.
Links to other sites: Los Angeles Times, swissinfo
Update 19:30 Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - Hannibal Qadaffi, son of Libya’s leader, who won his lawsuit for defamation of character, brought against the Geneva newspaper La Tribune de Genève and the city of Geneva, says he will continue to insist on an international tribunal to clear his name.
He filed charges after the newspaper published his police mug shot, which was leaked to it by a city employee, who remains unknown to city authorities despite a lengthy internal investigation that continues. The court noted that the photo, published 4 September 2009, was used illegally and that it offered readers no new information.
Police photos are not made public in Switzerland, where privacy laws protect those under arrest.
Qadaffi was not awarded monetary damages. He had sought CHF100,000, an amount well above that normally awarded by Swiss courts for atteints à l’honneur, a legal category broader than slander, the court pointed out, noting that in the case of the death of a spouse, the award is generally CHF30-40,000.
Sion, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - The former second in command of the police in canton Valais was fined CHF16,500 and handed a suspended sentence of 100 days of community service 1 April in a case of child sexual abuse. He was charged with sexual acts involving a 13-year-old girl.
The case underscores some of the difficulties courts, victims and the accused face in child sexual abuse cases.
The man, who was removed from his job and reassigned to a cantonal police department project where he is still working, was charged after the girl’s school contacted the police.
Charges against Tribune de Geneve journalist dismissed by judge
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - The legal case opened Thursday 18 March between Hannibal Qadaffi, son of Libya’s leader, and canton Geneva plus the Tribune de Genève newspaper. The judge quickly dismissed charges against a journalist working for the Tribune who had approved but not selected the article and photograph, the newspaper reports. But swissinfo reports that Hannibal Qadaffi, who has asked for damages of CHF100,000, said Thursday evening he is no longer interested in the money: he wants an international tribunal to acquit him. Qadaffi was interviewed by news agency AFP.
Basel, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – The CEO of Geothermal Explorers, the company that was drilling as part of a Basel geothermal energy project called Deep Heat, has been cleared of wrongdoing by a court in the city. Charges were brought against Markus Haering after the company’s drilling appeared to provoke earthquakes in Basel in 2006 and early 2007.
BMW Oracle left California 15 December for Valencia, Spain
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - The Alinghi sailing team is preparing to defend its World Cup title in the chilly winter waters of Valencia, Spain in 2010, following a decision Tuesday 15 December by a panel of New York Supreme Court judges to uphold an earlier decision. A judge ruled 30 October against the choice by Société Nautique de Genève’s of Ras Al Khaimah in the United Arab Emirates for the next America’s Cup. The four-judge panel also upheld an earlier decision to exclude rudders from the measurement of the load waterline length of the race yacht.
Alinghi will face BMW Oracle in February 2010 in Valencia. The BMW team, based in San Francisco, left California Tuesday for Valencia, to start preparing for the race.
Background, GenevaLunch
Links to other sites: Alinghi, BMW Oracle
UBS New York headquarters
Zurich, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – There will be no trial of the current and former heads of Swiss bank UBS, the Zurich prosecutor’s office announced Tuesday 15 December. Shortly afterwards, the UBS board announced that it would not press charges, either, against unnamed former senior executives. Swiss politicians have been calling for someone to take responsibility for the most serious banking debacle in Switzerland’s history.
The possibility that the bank might have collapsed at the end of 2008 in the wake of the US sub-prime catastrophe moved the Swiss government to inject billions of Swiss francs into the bank. The public prosecutor in Zurich said that in the case of the sub-prime losses and cross-border case that pitted UBS against US tax authorities, there was no evidence that Swiss law had been broken.
Update 14:00 Geneva, Switzerland (GenevLunch) – Geneva’s public prosecutor, Daniel Zapelli, has now prepared his case against the key people responsible for the collapse of Geneva’s cantonal bank (BCGE), reported the Tribune de Genève 1 October. The article gives a detailed account of the bank’s scandal 10 years ago, based on Zapelli’s 600-page indictment, which the Tribune obtained. Lawyers and government officials have expressed anger in the wake of the article, that a newspaper should have obtained a copy of the indictment before the parties concerned, reports 20 Minutes.
The debacle cost the canton CHF2 billion, and a foundation had to be created to pay off its debts. Hearings in the case began in 2000 and ended only in 2008: they resulted in 3,700 pages of recorded hearings, 40 binders for general information and 1,500 binders of documents related to the hearings, according to an article Le Temps wrote in 2007 about the lengthy judicial process for the case.
Update 7 September / More than 100 Irish IRA victims’ families in the UK have been told by Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s office in London that the government will not put formal pressure on Libya to compensate them, thus following the example of the US. Lawyers for three families in the US have obtained what the BBC describes as a multi-million pound out of court settlement with Libya, which the victims’ lawyers say supplied the IRA with explosives from Libya. Monday 7 September Libyan leader Muammar Qadaffi’s son Saif al-Islam told Sky News that if victims’ families requested compensation the answer in the first instance would be “no” and they could take the matter to court – a reply seen by the families as positive because it is the first sign of engagement on the part of Libya.
Zurich, Switzerland and Miami, Florida (GenevaLunch) – Bradley Birkenfeld was sentenced Friday in Miami, Florida, USA to three years and four months in prison plus a $30,000 fine and three years on probation following his prison term. He is the former UBS banker whose revelations to the IRS, the US tax authority, set off an investigation that led to bank UBS being taken to court and the US and Switzerland negotiating a treaty whereby the Swiss government will authorize the bank to release details of more than 4,000 client accounts. Full story
