Geneva court where the case is being investigated - Photo by wrong_response in Flickr
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – The Swiss public broadcaster Radio Suisse Romande (RSR) reports that three Al Rushaid Petroleum Investment Corp employees have been charged by the Geneva public prosecutor in a bribery and money-laundering case.
Two British nationals and one Pakistani working for the drilling division of Al Rushaid may have accepted millions of dollars in exchange for awarding valuable contracts; the funds may have then been illegally deposited in a Geneva bank.
Swissinfo reports that Al Rushaid claims it lost “hundreds of millions of dollars” because the equipment, “bought at inflated prices was often substandard or was not delivered at all, delaying or preventing the completion of contracts.”
The money, which has been blocked by Geneva judicial authorities was allegedly placed in a private Geneva bank.
Although Swiss radio declined to identify the bank, Bloomberg Businessweek says Geneva-based Pictet & Cie was sued in New York City by Rasheed Al Rushaid for “concealing their receipt of the bribe money.”
Lawyers for the accused maintain that the source of the money is not illegal. The bank, which according to Swissinfo has been questioned but not charged, also denies that the money was obtained illicitly.
Links to other sites: Swissinfo, RSR, Bloomberg Businessweek
BERN, SWITZERLAND – Swissinfo, SSR’s foreign language online news service and the largest web-based provider of news in English about Switzerland, will undergo major staffing cuts in the next 18 months, saving CHF9 million a year from its CHF26m annual budget. The savings will be split equally between SSR, Switzerland’s public broadcast company, and the Swiss federal government, which has mandated Swissinfo’s work.
The rationale appears to be to ensure the longer-term feasibility of Swissinfo in an online world that has changed radically since it was created 10 years ago, a phoenix rising from the ashes of the old Swiss International Radio. Swissinfo’s target audience is primarily foreigners interested in knowing more about Switzerland and the Swiss abroad. Its mandate has been, since the beginning, to provide in-depth information to foreigners on political, economic cultural and social aspects of Switzerland.
The site had traffic in 2009 of 23.7 million visits and about three times as many pages viewed. Its Facebook page is one of the most successful of any European media, with more than 100,000 fans, a figure that climbs to 200,000 if other social media platforms are taken into account.
Swissinfo was recently given a mandate by the government to add a tenth language, Russian.
Two-thirds of the staffing cuts will be technical and support staff, some of whom will be reassigned to SSR, and one-third will be editorial staff, mainly in Switzerland’s national languages with the three languages (French, German, Italian) regrouped as one editorial unit.
Two-thirds of the jobs lost will be through retirement or early retirement or reassignment, leaving 12-13 posts to be cut.
Swissinfo publishes in Arabic, Chinese, English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese, Spanish and soon Russian.
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Radio Frontier is about to go live, at least on the web, offering English speakers in the Lake Geneva region a new music and information service with a voice that will be familiar to many: Mark Butcher, who for several years hosted The Breakfast Show on WRG and later WRS radio, will be providing one of the key shows on Radio Frontier.
The new station was founded by Butcher and Peter Sibley, formerly of World Television in Geneva, to provide commercial radio with a very local slant that focuses on the French-Swiss border area.
RadioFrontier will initially be available at www.radiofrontier.ch, operating from new studios in Meyrin, with plans to expand in 2012.
Radio in English is growing
WRS and RadioFrontier are the only English stations in the region, although there are others, mainly available online, in Switzerland. They include Mountain Radio Verbier, also started by an ex-WRS employee, Conor Lennon.
Main sources of Swiss news in English
The new radio station boosts the English-language information offer that is produced in the region, whose main providers include:
- GenevaLunch, the main producer of regional online news and events listings in English
- public radio station WRS, World Radio Switzerland, which has a Swiss nationwide broadcast mandate and operates online and via DAB and FM
- swissinfo, the online English information arm of Swiss broadcasting, whose main mission is to keep overseas Swiss informed about their country
- Glocals, a local social network now connected to BuyClub.ch, for “group-buying deals”.
International Link is a non-profit organization started by the Vaud Chamber of Commerce to provide a business-based network for the area that introduces foreigners and Swiss people.
Swisster, an online English language news service started by Swiss publisher Edipresse, closed in December 2010.
There are several small local groups based in or near Geneva and Lausanne that provide a variety of services and products for English-speakers, some mainly for expatriates who are relatively new to Switzerland (see list at end).
Switzerland’s international population also attracts outside companies
In addition, Switzerland’s English speakers, viewed as well-educated and well-paid, are wooed by a number of social network and information groups based outside the region. Some, like AngloInfo, a business directory and forum, have strong local ties: the franchise is operated by a Geneva area resident, although some of the information comes from the larger parent group, whose roots are in the south of France.
Others have no, or very little, Swiss presence: Expatica is based in The Netherlands (note: they carry news from swissinfo and GenevaLunch news feeds, with our permission); the English Forum, a social network used by many newcomers to Switzerland, actually based in and moderated from Sweden and Germany and linked to a new news site called local.ch, run from Sweden.
Geneva.com is another “local” news site, run from Argentina.
GenevaLunch “friends”
Local information providers who offer good quality; some offer networking and others sell products:
Books, Books, Books in Lausanne
Expat-Expo, based in Zug
Know it All
Leman Events and Leman Expat Fair
Off the Shelf, online and in Geneva
Business clubs
American International Club
British-Swiss Chamber of Commerce
Executives International
Owit, Organization of Women in International Trade
Bern, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - Swissinfo’s new iPad application, released over the weekend, is making waves for its creative presentation as well as its precedent-setting use of nine languages. The app which became available free of charge 11 December.
Scott Capper, head of multimedia and community, says to his knowledge the previous largest number of languages available for a single app was six. Users will notice that navigation is feels more like a web page than the page-turning book style approach adopted by many app developers. It differs from the web site in terms of layout and navigation which is intuitive, using a touchscreen. Articles can be read offline.
Swissinfo is the online arm of Swiss public broadcasting, with responsibility mainly to keep the Swiss abroad informed about Switzerland. It had some 900,000 unique visitors viewing 6.4 million web pages a month (note correction) in 2009. The English and Arabic pages are particularly popular. The English Facebook pages claim 76,000 followers with Arabic FB pages having 60,000 followers, according to official statistics for swissinfo.
The new app offers news but “at a slower rhythm”, with a weekly review, according to the group’s web site. It also features swissinfo’s rich library of multimedia files on Switzerland.
The nine languages on offer: English, Chinese, Arabic, Japanese, Spanish, Portuguese, French, German and Italian.
Click on images to view larger
Swissinfo’s video cartoon history of Switzerland
Roger de Weck, new SSR CEO in January 2011
Bern, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Swiss Public Broadcasting Corporation, SSR, will be tightening its belt in January by streamlining its administrative structure. The company will be acting on the advice of Roger de Weck, who takes over in January as chief executive officer, to reduce the senior management team from nine members with four “paticipants” to seven members, with the four participants used as consultants on an occasional basis.
SSR owns TSR television, RSR radio, WRS radio and the swissinfo web site in the Lake Geneva region as well as several other media, in several languages, throughout Switzerland.
SSR cost-cutting part of the deal
Bern, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Billag, the company that charges households a Swiss television and license fee which forms a key component in the budget of SSR, Swiss public broadcasting, will bill only once a year starting in 2011, the Swiss government has decided. The annual fee for private households is a little over CHF460.
Billag currently bills quarterly, sending 12 million bills annually for total annual fees of CHF1.4 billion. The shift will provide administrative cost savings of CHF9-10 million, mainly for printed paper, that can be passed on to SSR, says Bern.
SSR has lobbied heavily for higher license fees and greater freedom to advertise, in order to meet the growing cost of continuing to produce original material. The Federal Council in June 2010 approved a budget of CHF134.5 million, but it refused to accept SSR’s proposals for CHF14m to improve the state of the pension fund, CHF16m to increase its capital and CHF3.5m for various expenses. It called on SSR to economize in order to cover these and other costs, but it also relaxed some of the public media advertising restrictions slightly.
The June decision also emphasized a stronger role for French media programmes, insisting that some of the budget be deployed to create more original material in French.
One part of the budget cuts proposed by SSR has been to eliminate swissinfo, but a spokeswoman at the federal communications office confirmed to GenevaLunch that the move would require the approval of the federal government. World Radio Switzerland is also part of the SSR family, as are TSR television and RSR radio.
Bern, Switzerland (GenevaLunch.com) - Swissinfo, the multi-language Internet arm of Swiss Broadcast Corporation, is stepping up its appeal to the public to sign a petition intended to help it survive. The news and information site, whose global reach is greater than that of TSR (Swiss public television) or the Tribune de Geneve, according to web-monitoring company Alexa, is threatened by budget cuts that staff say will mean its death.
They shared an appeal this week:
“As part of its 2011-2013 saving plans the government proposes to cut its SFr13m contribution to swissinfo’s budget which would effectively result in our death. The executive board of our parent company, SSR SRG idée suisse, swissinfo’s public advisory board and the executive board of the Swiss abroad organization have all expressed their public opposition to this proposal.
Deficit for 2010 expected to soar due to sports coverage
Bern, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - SSR, Swiss public broadcasting, is seeking the right to raise more funds through advertising and license fees, saying its funding situation is “critical” with a third annual deficit of CHF75 million expected for 2010. The figure was put forward Tuesday 27 April when the group published its key financial figures for 2009, showing a CHF46.7m deficit. The figure was better than the loss SSR had in 2008 of CHF79.1m, but the group needs the government’s approval to increase the level of advertising or license fees to add revenue, just as it needs the cabinet (Federal Council) to give it the right to cut back editorially, on content.
SSR owns TSR television, RSR radio, WRS English radio and the swissinfo web site for the Swiss abroad, as well as German, Italian and Romansch radio and TV stations.
The company blames the loss for a sharp drop in commercial sales in 2009, down more than 26 percent, when Swiss media in general suffered from a large decline in advertising revenue.
Geneva, a city with a turnover of 50,000 people a year
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - Swissinfo today (8 September) carries an insightful report on Geneva’s identity problem, based on a sociology study done by the University of Geneva. The study shows that 92.8 percent of the population loves the city, but people do not put down roots or invest in Geneva’s cultural or political life. The sense that the city has no soul appears to bother few people, however, and may be due to its special population: some 50,000 people move into and out of the city every year; this, coupled with a border population of 500,000 that moves in and out of the canton daily creates a city of people without roots, and non-Genevans who are never absorbed into the city life.
The Swiss eat more chocolate and recycle more glass than anyone
Bern, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - Swissinfo, for its 10th anniversary, is compiling a list of all the ways in which Switzerland is a record-holder, from the longest glacier and the highest number of train riders, to some that are up for debate – it makes for fun summer reading.
rough sailing for swissinfo
Bern, Switzerland (romandie/ats, Fre) – The CHF26 million budget for Swissinfo could be cut by one-quarter, or some CHF7 million, the board of SSR, its parent company says. It has ordered the head of the Internet site, TSR and DRS (Swiss German radio) to study a series of options for streamlining operations in order to cut costs.
Bern, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – SSR, the Swiss public broadcasting company, will combine TSR and RSR, its television and radio units in French-speaking Switzerland, as well as its television and radio in German-speaking Switzerland. The move is designed in part as a response to a group 2008 financial loss of CHF79 million, reports TSR, citing an SSR press release, but also as a longer term response to changing audience habits and technical developments in journalism.
