Police in Vaud and Geneva join forces to combat cross-border theft
Number of assaults in Geneva fell in 2011
Violent crimes fell in Geneva in 2011: orange shows simple injuries and yellow serious plus homicides (Source: Geneva Police / OFS statistics)
GENEVA / LAUSANNE, SWITZERLAND – Geneva tops the Swiss list for a 2011 rise in property crimes, including break-ins and theft, but Lausanne, Basel, Bern and Zurich also saw increases last year that outpaced population growth and were well above the national average of 71 per 1,000 inhabitants.
Geneva’s violent crimes, including all degrees and forms of assault, fell in 2011, however; one exception was the increase from 4 (2008) to 15 knife attacks, in four years.
Urban border regions in western Switzerland in particular have seen cross-border burglary increases and Tuesday the cantonal ministers in charge of police for Geneva and Vaud announced a joint task force to step up coordination with French police to tackle the problem.
They are also calling for tougher penalties against repeat offenders and note that the “Lake Geneva region appears to have become a privileged target for robbers.”
Two features of the cross-border crime that are worrying police in Geneva, reports swissinfo, are the number of under-age Balkans working in theft in a stretch from Milan to Paris and a shift from street crime to burglaries by a group of about 400 North Africans living illegally in Geneva.
Burglaries in Geneva rose 29 percent in 2011, break-ins 19 percent and vehicle theft 9 percent
The new European Sourcebook of Crime and Criminal Justice Statistics 2010 indicates that Switzerland has one of the highest rates of criminal problems linked to migration, but the most recent figures are five years old, covering 2003-2007, and European reporting standards differ. The UK, for example, records ethnic background rather than nationality for criminals arrested, while Switzerland, which has one of Europe’s highest rates of resident foreigners, lists nationality.
Geneva and Basel are the only two cantons with 2011 crime rates higher than 100 per 1,000: 159 for Geneva and 119 for Basel (source: Swiss Federal Statistical Office)
Crime statistics for Switzerland for 2011 were released Monday by the Federal Statistical Office in Neuchatel, and include cantonal details.
Cantonal police have been releasing highway and accident statistics in the past few days.
Overall, numbers show a mixed safety picture, with property crimes up, more foreigners entering and re-entering the country illegally and who are often linked to other crimes.
Nationwide, violent crimes are down by 7 percent and in the Lake Geneva region there were fewer road accidents.
Geneva was the subject of much media hype in 2011 about personal safety and crime but the statistics don’t bear out complaints that the city is unsafe, physically, although residents and visitors would do well to watch their cars, motorbikes and bags, with theft on the rise.
Vaud saw its overall crime rate jump 18.6 percent, with a 14 percent increase in break-ins and 7 percent increase in robberies. Country-wide the rate of break-ins rose 16 percent. Car theft was up by 4 percent.
A concern in Vaud is the “massive presence of Bulgarian and Romanian prostitutes, implying a potential problem with human trafficking,” the canton notes in a press release. Police closed down immediately 7 of the more than 700 massage parlours they checked during the year.
Swiss federal customs officers (photo, Swiss Customs Office)
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – Swiss Customs, working closely with French colleagues under the Swiss-EU anti-fraud agreement, have uncovered a ring of cigarette smugglers who imported some 50,000 cartons of cigarettes into France.
The business is valued at CHF2 billion in lost tax monies.
A number of people have been taken in for questioning in relation to a series of crimes that used UN employees who do not have diplomatic status but faked this to import quantities of the goods tax free.
UN employees with diplomatic status do not pay taxes on a number of goods.
An investigation carried out in Switzerland helped French police catch two French citizens driving a van with 1,600 cartons of illegally imported cigarettes.
Bolder thieves: rush hour main street robbery in Rolle
Rolle, main street supermarket robbery Wednesday
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – Armed robbers in the Lake Geneva region are getting bolder, with a supermarket hold-up on the main street of Rolle at 19:00 Wednesday night the latest example.
Two masked men broke into the Grand-rue store (police do not mention the Coop at that address specifically) at 19:00, after closing hours and “violently” threatened two of the four employees at gunpoint before making off with an undisclosed sum of money. The two, ages 26 and 30, were in shock but otherwise unharmed, say police.
Two other employees were not directly involved and there were no customers in the store at the time.
The thieves fled “in an unknown direction” and have not been found, despite a significant police search. Anyone with information is asked to contact police at +41 21 644 4444.
Description: 180-190cm tall for the first, both men of average build, wearing dark clothes, with one speaking French with a North African accent.
Valais thieves nabbed
Two thieves, ages 62 and 68, who live in France, were caught in the act of breaking and entering Monday 23 January at 23:00 in Evionnaz, canton Valais. Police were phoned after someone noticed suspicious lights on in an area business, on the Route du Simplon. The building was quickly surrounded and police caught one man attempting to leave the premises and soon found a second man parked at the train station. Stolen goods from three local businesses were found: money, cameras and cell phones.
The two have police records in France, Valais police note.
Vaud, 2 other armed robberies this week: hairdresser’s shop, bank machine client
Earlier this week Vaud police reported two holdups, one Wednesday in Payerne, where a hairdresser was robbed by a man with a knife just as she was closing, and the other a woman in Gland who had just taken money from a bank machine near the post office at midday.
The 44-year-old woman was robbed at gunpoint in Gland at 12:30 Saturday. His description: 20-25-year-old man, European in appearance, 175-180cm tall and thin, dressed in a black sweatshirt with hood, black scarf and gloves, black pistol. He fled in the direction of the train station and has not yet been found.
The Payerne hold-up was also carried out by a thin young man, 175cm in height, wearing dark clothes, speaking French with an accent that could not be identified. He fled the scene and despite a search with dogs and several police patrols, he has not yet been found.
Geneva police arrest 3 on several charges after Sunday night high-speed chase
Police in Geneva have three men, ages 19-23, under arrest following a high-speed chase late Sunday. All three reside in Geneva but are Kosovar, Serbian and Macedonian. The stolen car they were traveling in was spotted by police at the intersection of rue Lect and the routes du Nant-d’Avril and Satigny at 22:00. The driver of the car, instead of stopping when the patrol car put on its flashing lights, took off and led police on a high-speed chase. The car was finally stopped in Meyrin and the men taken into custody, where they admitted to a series of local crimes:
- the car was stolen 14 January when they were stopped by a police officer while they were stealing copper from a Lignon construction site; they escaped in the car, which the police officer managed to photograph, after one of them showed the office a Swiss passport, which turned out to be stolen
- the person whose passport was stolen reported it to Geneva police 16 January, showing a complaint filed earlier in Vaud: his house in canton Vaud had been broken into 3 January and he had filed a complaint with police there for the stolen passport and jewels
- the stolen car was reported by Vaud police in connection with unpaid petrol at a station in Yverdon 20 January
- two of the three held up a woman earlier Sunday evening, at a Vernier car wash, where one said he was a policeman and demanded her wallet; they then fled with the wallet, including her identity papers, which police found when they stopped the men. When they phoned the woman she said she had not yet had a chance to report the theft to police
- the man who had posed as a police officer admitted it and said that he had been driving the stolen car daily, without a license, and that on his own he had robbed a number of villas in Lausanne, Morges, Nyon and Fribourg.
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – A man described by Swiss customs as a Russian, age about 20, was stopped in Presinge, Geneva, after he attempted to evade border checks by getting off a bus, then heading through fields with a large collection of jewels of “dubious origin”.
Border guards noticed the odd behaviour of the man who got off at bus stop Les Bornes, from a line C Malagnou – Monniaz bus.
Mallet, one of the two engines stolen, probably by a van with a forklift, from Le Bouveret's Swiss Vapeur Parc
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – Two train engines from Le Bouveret’s miniature train park at the eastern tip of Lake Geneva were stolen sometime between 5 and 16 November, after the park closed for the season 1 November. The theft was discovered only Thursday, the 17th, by a gardener at Swiss Vapeur Parc who noticed that a door appeared to have been forced open.
He called police who found that three doors had been forced and two engines were missing.
The locomotives weigh at least 800kg each. The locomotives at the park have track gauges of 5” or 7 1/4″.
The theft is creating a stir not just because the size of the train engines would make it difficult for someone to steal them, but because they are rare and well known in the world of small trains, and therefore not something that could easily be publicly displayed or used elsewhere.
The value of the trains is hard to calculate, but thousands of hours were put in by volunteers to build them, according to the park.
Canton Valais police are asking anyone with information to contact them at +41 24 486 6000.
BVB, hand-crafted by modelmaker Claude Gachnang
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – Swiss jewelers are being hit by a spate of armed robberies, with two people injured Friday morning in Lugano and one person in Gstaad.
The thieves in Gstaad, a luxury resort in the Bernese Oberland region, tied up an employee, who was threatened with a knife, before getting away with several thousand francs worth of watches, say police.
The owner of a jewelry shop in Lugano, canton Ticino, was injured, as was a shop employee, who tried to chase two thieves despite his injuries. One of the thieves was caught, but the other escaped.
Link to photos at the Corriere del Ticino.
CHUV in Lausanne
LAUSANNE, SWITZERLAND – The Chuv university hospitals, which have greatly tightened their financial auditing systems since a neurologist stole nearly CHF5 million to feed his passion for precious books, Wednesday 5 October faced a new theft. A woman who worked in the visceral (internal organs, especially digestive) surgery unit as assistant to the director of the César Roux foundation has been suspended after admitting to taking CHF100,000 to support her gambling habit.
The teaching and research in surgery foundation is not technically part of the university hospitals but is closely linked; since it is not legally part of the Chuv its financial operations are not under the same close scrutiny, a situation the Chuv noted Wednesday it intends to clarify and put in order. The employee had access to documents and had use of a bank card for the foundation, in the name of her boss.
It was only when the professor, her boss, was confronted by the shortfall during an annual audit by a privatr company that the woman was asked to supply receipts corresponding to the amounts she had taken out. She was unable to do so and she then admitted to the crime.
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – A 17-year-old was mugged in Geneva in mid-July, reportedly sustaining fractures and bruises. In most major cities, the news would have barely made the inside pages of the local paper. But the victim was the child of a US diplomat to the United Nations, and Geneva is a small city, widely considered to be relatively safe, so the news has struck a nerve and caught the attention of media far beyond Switzerland, particularly in the US.
The United Nations in Geneva sent out a warning to staff about going out alone at night, later tamed down. The Swiss president, Micheline Calmy-Rey, a Genevan who has put time and energy into promoting the city’s international centre reputation, had firm words for Geneva authorities about her concerns over “the deterioration of the security situation” in the city, and with 2011 a federal election year in Switzerland, the story has made headlines.
The Associated Press has run a feature that is being picked up by several US news media. The US news agency says “reports of the attack have spooked Geneva’s large foreign and diplomatic community, prompting water cooler tales of muggings, break-ins and assaults.” It cites a 2009 survey: “Last year, Geneva authorities published a survey showing more than two-thirds of foreigners felt security in the city had worsened. The survey, which questioned 1,082 people working for international organizations, diplomatic missions and multinational companies, found one in ten had been victims of burglary or street crime in the past three years.”
The survey (French, pdf) also notes, however, that “the expatriates were almost unanimous in saying they felt the level of safety in Geneva was well above that in their home country or their last country of residence.
GENEVA, SWTIZERLAND – Nine men, six from France and three from Switzerland, all drivers for a transport company in Meyrin, were arrested after their boss called in police at 13:00 Wednesday 15 June. He suspected that the men were stealing petrol from the company. Officers checked the cars of two employees leaving the site and found 20 litres of stolen petrol in the back of one and two jerrycans with 25 litres each in the back of another.
The men admitted that the practice has been going on for months and is widespread, but Geneva police have not said what they were doing with the petrol, if it was for personal use or re-sale.
Basel, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Andre Messika, the victim of a well-publicized theft during opening hours at the Basel watch and jewelry fair in early March, has been paid $10 million by insurers, according to Idex, an international diamond exchange. The fair’s insurers, Malca-Amit and its subsidiary insurance broker Mira, were on the scene shortly after what has been called by police a highly professional job, and within a week the insurance investigation was completed and underwriters had agreed to pay Messika the full amount of his claim.
Idex cites Malca as saying professional thefts like this are on the rise at jewelry and watch fairs worldwide.
Basel, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – A group of what police are calling highly professional thieves stole four diamonds from a stand at the Basel watch and jewelry fair Wednesday 30 March.
The gang of possibly five got away despite the alert being raised quickly and the hall being sealed off within minutes to prevent them from leaving.
The diamonds belonged to an Israeli dealer who was distracted by three would-be clients while two others broke into the display case, which they appear to have checked out in advance, according to a statement by the Basel public attorney.
Fingerprints have been lifted by investigators and video surveillance footage is being examined.
The value of the jewels is in the millions, but was not specified. Baselworld has attracted thieves in the past: one was caught in 2009 attempting to steal CHF13 million in jewels and he is now serving a three-year prison term.
TSR reports that one exhibitor had a a case of his goods stolen from a trolley at Zurich airport last week.
Baselworld closes today, 31 March.
Links to other sites: AFP, TSR (Fr)
Lausanne, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - A woman in the Lake Geneva area in the past week had her bank card stolen and CHF15,000 withdrawn from her bank account while someone helped her change the flat tire, police in canton Vaud say.
They are warning women in particular to be on the alert for a flat tire scam that has had several victims in recent days in parking lots around Lausanne and the La Cote region.
The scam generally begins with the woman, whose car has been identified, being watched while she pays for shopping or gets cash out of the bank. One of the thieves notes her bank card code while the other, in the parking lot, lets the air out of one of her tires.
When she returns and sees the flat, he offers to help her change it. His accomplice, meanwhile, slips just her bank card out of her bag, often left lying on the passenger seat in the car, so she is not immediately aware it is missing.
Rock candy takes on a new meaning in Geneva, with $2.3m candy swap diamond heist (photo, Mario Sarto, wikipedia)
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – A 61-year-old Israeli man accused in Geneva of stealing $2.3 million in diamonds from Alldiam, a Geneva diamond dealer, can be extradited to Switzerland to stand trial. A court in Jerusalem made the ruling Monday 21 February, according to Israeli media.
The man was arrested at his home in Ramat Gan in July 2010, after reportedly entering Israel under a false identity. His partner in the supposed crime had earlier been arrested in The Netherlands.
The two are suspected of replacing real diamonds they were being shown with candy ones, then smuggling the real jewels out of Switzerland. The theft, according to the extradition request, occurred in April 2009 at a meeting at Alldiam in Plan-les-Ouates, Geneva.
It is not clear if the diamonds were rough or already cut and polished.
Alldiam was created by Jean-Pierre Hofmann in Geneva in 1979. The company cuts its own diamonds in Surat, India and sells them.
The Israeli man’s wife says he is being detained in Israel under poor conditions and that he is in weak health, arguments his lawyer used to no avail in the extradition hearings, according to Ynet.
Rudolf Elmer at a press conference in Zurich 19 January
Zurich, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Rudolf Elmer, the former Bank Julius Baer employee who famously appeared with Julian Assange of WikiLeaks two days before his trial in Zurich for theft and threatening his former employer, has had one of his appeals turned down, his lawyer has told Swiss media in a press release.
He was convicted but given a suspended sentence 19 January for threats and theft, a lighter sentence than the prosecutor had demanded. He was then re-arrested within minutes on suspicion of breaking Switzerland’s banking secrecy laws, with which he was charged 22 January.
The appeal that was turned down 16 February was for the 19 January judgement, which did not cover banking secrecy.
He appealed, 27 January, his 22 January remand in custody for breaking bank secrecy laws by handing information to tax authorities, and this remains pending.
Elmer’s attorney, Ganden Tethong, noted in a press release 22 January that:
“The parties were informed of the court’s ruling this afternoon. In its decision, the court held that:
- there is probable cause to arrest Mr Elmer
- there is danger of collusion; in conclusion
- it granted remand.”
Switzerland’s law forbids bankers from handing data on client accounts to tax authorities unless done so at the client’s request.
Related stories in GenevaLunch:
Julius Baer nemesis reborn as Assange pal (17 January 2011)Rudolf Elmer arrested again over latest WikiLeaks handover (19 January 2011)
Zurich, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Former Bank Julius Baer employee Rudolf Elmer has given a CHF7,200 suspended fine but no prison sentence for stealing data from the bank and handing it to tax authorities, the media and whistleblowing web site WikiLeaks. He will pay CHF5,000 in court costs; the loser in Swiss court cases generally bears the cost.
The judge found Elmer, who admitted to breaking Swiss banking secrecy laws, guilty of theft and of threatening his former employer, but charges of making a bomb threat and anonymously demanding CHF50,000 were dismissed.
The prosecution had called for a firm prison sentence of eight months, but the judge is not sending him to jail. The fine was higher than the CHF2,000 asked by the prosecution, but it was suspended, meaning that
Links to other sites: romandie (Fr), NZZ (Ger), swissinfo, TSR (Fr)
Admits he sent anonymous threats to former employer
(TSR video, Fr) Zurich, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - Rudolf Elmer, famously photographed with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange five days ago in London at a press conference, appeared in court in Zurich Wednesday morning to face several charges of threats against his former Swiss bank employer and theft of bank data.
Elmer admitted in court to some of the charges of threatening his former employer, but not others. His defense rests on the argument that he was a whistleblower who wanted only to reveal corporate corruption.
He acknowledged breaking Swiss bank secrecy laws, part of data protection laws in Switzerland, however, when he admitted that he shared the bank data with “authorities”. It’s not clear who is meant by this.
Elmer’s lawyer argued that he has not broken Swiss banking secrecy laws, since they don’t apply in the Cayman Islands, where he worked for Bank Julius Baer. A spokesman for the bank made the same point to GenevaLunch some months ago.
Elmer appears to have first shared the data, which dates from 1997-2002, with a Swiss business publication, Cash magazine in Zurich.
Elmer faces up to eight months in prison and a CHF2,000 fine if found guilty. Public television TSR reports that the prosecutor had initially requested eight month suspended sentence, but when Elmer was shown turning over yet more data to Assange, in addition to what he gave WikiLeaks in 2008, the prosecutor asked for a sentence that would have to be served, saying Elmer had learned nothing.
He admitted to sending anonymous, menacing e-mail messages to his former employer, but argued that this was because he felt “psychologically threatened” by the bank, that he was under surveillance and asked to take a lie detector test, which he refused to do.
The bank had discovered a data theft shortly before Elmer was fired and bank policy requires employees to take a lie detector test in such an event.
Elmer worked for Bank Julius Baer for 20 years, the last eight of which he was in charge of operations for the bank in the Cayman Islands.
He denied two other charges of threatening his employer, one a bomb alert in Zurich and the other an anonymous demand made from an Internet cafe for the bank to pay him CHF50,000.
Links to other sites: swissinfo, rsr/ats (Fre)
Zurich, where Rudolf Elmer goes on trial for stealing data from Bank Julius Baer
Update 18 January Zurich, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange was back in the headlines Monday 17 January with a much-publicized appearance with publicity-keen former Swiss banker Rudolf Elmer, who turned over to Assange, at a press conference in London, some 2,000 files with what he says are private bank account details.
Elmer goes on trial 19 January, not for breaking Swiss banking secrecy laws, as has been widely reported, but for theft, forgery and for harassing his former employer’s staff, Bank Julius Baer, Zurich police told GenevaLunch.
Elmer headed the bank’s Caribbean wealth management services for eight years when, according to the bank, his theft of data was discovered and he was fired.
He had worked at the bank for 20 years. Elmer became a whistleblower for WikiLeaks, leaking data with client accounts names in 2008, but the bank data he had access to was already old, from 1997-2002. Elmer had earlier leaked it to Cash magazine in Switzerland and the Wall Street Journal, which published the information in 2005 but without client names.
The bank claims that the data is not only old, but that some of the documents are forged. WikiLeaks technology assessment man Daniel Schmitt (Daniel Domscheit-Berg) has reportedly claimed that some of the information is from the time after Elmer left the Cayman Islands. Elmer, however, told swissinfo in a 3 December 2010 interview that forgeries may have played a role in the information published by WikiLeaks, but his remarks are puzzling:
“One thing that’s certain is that with Julius Bär, genuine and forged documents were published – the latter probably to spread disinformation since Julius Bär couldn’t shut down Wikileaks. Uploading fake data was the only way to question the credibility of the information on Wikileaks. Unfortunately this also shows that Wikileaks didn’t check the data professionally. This is a general weakness of Wikileaks.”
The former Julius Baer employee worked for the bank in the Cayman Islands, where accounts are not covered by Swiss banking secrecy laws, although they are covered by corporate theft laws. He was sought on charges by canton Zurich but not by the Swiss federal government.
Handing two disks to Assange in London, Elmer, who worked for the bank for 20 years, told reporters that “working in the Cayman Islands I realized that something was wrong.” He argues that he wanted “to let our society know what I do know because it’s damaging our society in a way that money is moved away by financial institutions, multinational conglomerates and high-net-worth individuals, money is hidden in offshore ventures.”
Background story, GenevaLunch, “Bank whistleblowers and thieves grab headlines”, 21 January 2010
A lone masked thief in Paris stole five paintings including works by Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse worth between 100 and 500 million euros.
The theft took place overnight, while three security guards were on duty at the Paris Museum of Modern Art.
The museum has been cordoned off while police investigate the crime scene.
Links to other sites: AP News, The Guardian
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - The police operation called “Figaro” has logged 1,200 hours in its first week, with 300 people brought in for questioning and 35 arrests, according to city police. The operation is designed to clean up the city centre in Geneva following a sharp increase in petty crimes in 2009. Most of those stopped were questioned about thefts and drug sales.
The greater police presence, notably with more foot patrols, covers four districts: Pâquis, Eaux-Vives, Rive and the area around Cornavin train station.
Background, GenevaLunch
Links to other sites: TSR (Fre), Tribune de Geneve (Fre)
Lausanne, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – The 18-year-old twin brother of the young man shot by a police officer during a high-speed chase is in prison in Fribourg, the court-appointed lawyer has confirmed to Swiss media. The two were in a stolen car, one of three, when they came up against a police roadblock on the A1 autoroute near the Vaud-Fribourg cantonal line. A police officer shot seven times, killing the passenger in the car. The policeman has been held for questioning on possible involuntary manslaughter charges.
The family of the dead man, minus his twin brother, attended funeral services in Lausanne Thursday 22 April and visited the site on the autoroute where he died. The family, of Kurdish origin, lives in France, near Lyons. The two brothers were part of a group that was stealling three luxury cars from a garage in Fribourg.
Background, GenevaLunch
Link to RSR, public radio in French
Basel, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Basel police say robbers who broke into the city’s casino in the early hours of Sunday made off with several thousand francs, but they were unable to shoot their way into the vault.
Ten thieves arrived in two gray Audis and split into two groups.
Thefts rose by 7% overall in Geneva, Switzerland in 2009
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - The rate of theft per inhabitant in Geneva jumped 7 percent in 2009 and is now the highest in Switzerland, police figures released Tuesday 23 March show.
Car thefts, of which there were 470, rose by 8.9 percent but bicycle thefts, of which there were 3,300, rose by a startling 62.8 percent.
If it doesn't have a bicycle lock, buy one
Purse snatchings and pickpocketing were up 15 percent: 4,484 cases.
And the culprit is found in only 12 percent of cases for theft as a whole.
Neuchatel, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Switzerland has for the first time produced nationwide crime statistics that will in future allow for true comparisons between areas. Top of the list of crimes committed: theft and property damage, which together make up 82 percent of all crimes, with car theft more than one-third of these.
Swiss police registered 675,309 crimes in 2009.
Domestic violence: one-third of violent crimes; foreigners commit one-third of all crimes
Herve Falciano recounted a saga of life in a thriller to Nice Matin newspaper but there is little evidence to back the story
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - Europe’s largest bank made a startling confession, accompanied by an apology, to its clients 11 March: Britain’s HSBC said it had been given evidence by the Swiss Federal Prosecutor that a Geneva office employee stole data linked to 24,000 client accounts and tried to sell the information abroad. The employee, Hervé Falciani, had tried to flog that data to Lebanon in 2008. His failed attempt was the start of the unraveling of his theft scheme. Evidence of efforts by Falciani and a female companion for the first time linked his name to the theft, which the Swiss government had been investigating for several weeks.
Human factor is the real risk for an international company with secrets
It also drew attention to a significant problem for international companies that have any private data, from client information to research and development data: It takes a human being to steal for personal gain, so knowing staff well is as critical to security as a good IT system. Laws inside a country may protect corporate secrets and privacy, but once international boundaries are crossed the issue of countries not extraditing their own citizens can become an issue.
Thief, spy saga victim or honest whistleblower: Falciani’s many faces
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Houses are being burgled at a far higher rate than usual in Geneva, police have told the Tribune de Geneve: some 800 cases in January and 30 a day in February, the highest rate since 2000. The Tribune points out that Switzerland is easier on robbers, particularly in cases of simple (unarmed) robbery, than are neighbouring countries. A person found guilty of breaking and entering in Geneva will generally receive a sentence of a few days in jail while in France a repeat offender will be sent to prison.
Canton Vaud, which publishes a map of break-ins every Monday, has remained stable with about 60-70 home robberies a week, although this rose to nearly double around the Christmas holidays.
Update 13:30 Lausanne, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – The trial for fraud opened in Lausanne Monday morning 25 January of Dr Julien Bogousslavsky, world-renowned neurologist and specialist in strokes. He is accused of pocketing CHF5.3 million, money he reputedly took from the coffers of the university hospital’s neurology department, as well as research funds provided by companies.
Bogousslavsky admitted at the trial opening that he had taken the money, and he apologized, saying that he was glad the situation had ended.
Flying back from warm climates, other time zones to Geneva: keep up your guard at the airport
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Passengers at Geneva’s Cointrin airport are more than normally the target of thieves and purse snatchers during the holidays, and airport security services are cautioning people to be extra-vigilant over the holiday season. A well-known graphic designer was robbed of his bag containing ID, credit cards and money as he was loading his things into a car after a trip, reports 2o Minutes 22 December.
The first holiday weekend, 19-20 December, saw 100,000 people pass through the airport, nearly double the usual number. Signs at the airport remind passengers to be wary: thieves find that tired and disoriented arriving passengers and stressed departing ones are easy prey.
A group of llamas and goats from an Australian circus that were stolen from the pound where police put them has been the big news story in Ireland Friday and Saturday 2-3 October, although more than 50 percent of eligible voters did turn their attention to the referendum on the European Union long enough to vote. The votes are being counted at Dublin Castle Saturday morning with 516 accredited media organizations from around the world in attendance. Ireland is the only country to hold a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty.
Meanwhile, unaware perhaps of the key vote, a group of three goats and five llamas “ran wild” on the M50 motorway near Dublin Thursday noon after their gate at the Australian Circus Sydney, staying at Tallaght, was left open. Police took in the errant animals and put them in a pound, demanding €5,500 for their return. During the night hard-working thieves took the animals, reports the Irish Times: “The thieves traversed eight fields, opened up ditches and travelled two kilometres on foot to the shed where the animals were being kept.” The owner, who says he did not know where the animals were being kept by police, suspects animal rights activists. He says the tamed animals are worth at least €2,000 each, but are useless except to circuses.
Links to other sites: Irish votes live on Irish Times
Police in London, UK arrested two men 19 August in connection with the 6 August robbery at Graff Jewelry in New Bond Street in which £40 million worth of jewelry was stolen. The police are studying closed circuit tv footage and DNA samples taken from two cars and a motorcycle discarded after the robbery, as well as makeup and dyes used to alter their appearance. In what was Britain’s biggest jewelry robbery, the police have offered a reward of £1 million for information. BBC, The Times
Britain’s revenue service is warning taxpayers to carefully guard the passwords sent to them by HM Revenue and Customs for use in filing tax returns electronically. Several attempted fraudulent claims have been filed in an effort by organized gangs to obtain people’s tax refunds, the government office says. BBC
