Swiss police spied on dozens of government ministers

The surveillance scandal generated street protests (pictured in 1990) Keystone-SDA

At least 39 Swiss government ministers were secretly monitored by police during the so-called ‘Secret Files Scandal’ between 1930 and 1989, according the SonntagsZeitung newspaper.

Reporters have examined hundreds of thousands of surveillance files from the federal archive office and federal and cantonal police departments. They found files on numerous government officials, including Christoph Blocher, Moritz Leuenberger, Ruth Dreifuss and Elisabeth Kopp.

Many of the files were first opened when the future government ministers became politically active in their younger years. For example, police spied on Dreifuss for her opposition to the Vietnam war. She later served as government minister between 1993 and 2002, becoming the first women to be elected as Swiss president under the system that revolves the office between different ministers each year.

Switzerland’s first female government minister, Elisabeth Kopp (who served in office from 1914 until 1989) was monitored after her father heavily invested in a dubious business in Hungary.

The surveillance files, which also monitored other prominent Swiss citizens from pre-World War II and through the Cold War, were discontinued in 1989 following a public outcry.

Moritz Leuenberger, who served as government minister from 1995 to 2010, played a prominent role in stopping the surveillance tactics by heading a parliamentary commission that investigated the issue.

Leuenberger was also the subject of a police dossier. He told the SonntagsZeitung that he had only seen snippets of the records that monitored his movements and associations.

“I mainly read trivial things, inaccuracies and even deliberate falsehoods,” he told the newspaper. The files also indirectly linked him to people with whom he had no connection. “Such entries are typical of the mix of suspicion and false accusations that repeatedly appeared in the files,” Leuenberger said.

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Translated from German, reviewed by an English Department journalist.