Ogi announces secret service shake-up
The defence minister, Adolf Ogi, has announced that the strategic intelligence unit is to be taken out of army hands and transformed into a civilian organisation. It follows a review of the unit's operations in the wake of last year's fraud scandal.
Ogi told a news conference on Wednesday the change would take effect from 2001. But he said the army and air force would retain their own intelligence units.
“After everything that has happened, we are moving forward step by step,” he said.
The new civilian body will remain affiliated to the defence ministry, but will no longer be directly controlled by it.
“There is no question of the unit being directly under the control of the head of the ministry,” Ogi said. But he said he would intervene to resolve any problems.
The top jobs have yet to be filled.
Making the strategic intelligence unit a civilian body was one of the recommendations of the Brunner report on the secret services, published last February.
The report was prompted by the Bellasi affair, named after the former intelligence officer, Dino Bellasi, who was last year found to have embezzled SFr9 million of ministry funds.
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