Prosecutor’s office comes under fire
The Swiss Federal Prosecutor's Office is to be the subject of an extraordinary investigation as a result of internal and external criticism.
The probe is being made into both financial and leadership aspects, the justice ministry said on Monday.
It added that Justice Minister Christoph Blocher and the president of the Federal Criminal Court’s appeals chamber, Emanuel Hochstrasser, had taken the decision.
The ministry and the criminal court are the watchdogs of the prosecutor’s office.
A communiqué said the ministry would announce who would carry out the examination on its behalf in the next few days.
Mounting pressure
Pressure on the prosecutor’s office and the prosecutor himself, Valentin Roschacher, has been mounting since publication of an article in the latest edition of the weekly Weltwoche magazine.
In it, it was claimed that a Colombian informant and drug baron had duped Roschacher in a money laundering case concerning a private banker, Oskar Holenweger.
Justice Ministry spokesman Livio Zanolari confirmed that the article was “one element” in the decision to call for the investigation but it was not the deciding factor.
“There were other factors which prompted action,” he said.
Action
Zanolari could give no details about how long the probe would last but said that it was in the interests of the functional efficiency of the prosecutor’s office for action as soon as possible.
He added that there were no implications for staff at the prosecutor’s office linked with the investigation.
One agency report suggested that the decision was surprisingly taken on a public holiday as a result of the echo from the Weltwoche article and the fact that parliament begins its summer session on Tuesday.
swissinfo with agencies
Valentin Roschacher was born in 1960 and studied law at Zurich University.
He was district prosecutor in Zurich from 1992 to 1995.
Roschacher joined the federal police office in 1995.
He has been federal prosecutor since March 1, 2000.
In Switzerland, the cantonal judicial authorities are competent to deal with most criminal proceedings.
However, some categories of crime come under the jurisdiction of the federal prosecutor’s office.
These include causing explosions, counterfeiting, espionage, organised international crime and financial crime, money laundering, bribery, and offences committed by federal employees in the exercise of their public duties.
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