Special prosecutor closes Crypto Affair investigation

The scandal involved manipulated encryption devices made by Zug-based firm Crypto Keystone / Ennio Leanza

The criminal investigation into violations of official secrecy linked to the so-called Crypto Affair has been concluded.

Peter Marti, the government’s special public prosecutor, announced the decision on Thursday. The discontinuation order is not yet legally binding.

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The scandal, which came to light in February 2020, involved manipulated encryption devices made by Zug-based firm Crypto which the CIA and the German intelligence agency used to spy on half the world.

Marti, a former judge and district attorney, was appointed in January 2021 as a special public prosecutor to look into violations of official secrecy that took place during the investigation. Information from the confidential draft of the inspection report had ended up in the hands of certain media, causing serious institutional damage for parliament’s business audit commissions, according to the supervisory authority for the Office of the Attorney General.

Among the accused were Markus Seiler, secretary general of the foreign ministry, and Peter Lauener, the former head of communications at the interior ministry.

Marti wrote on Thursday that the initial suspicion that Seiler and Lauener, as well as another accused person from the foreign ministry and a Tamedia journalist, had passed on information from the confidentially classified draft report to the media could not be substantiated, despite extensive investigations.