Switzerland Today
Dear Swiss Abroad,
Saturday is Swiss National Day. But alongside preparations for the celebrations, concerns are also mounting about the fire risk associated with the use of fireworks. These fears are also fuelled by the massive blaze ravaging southwestern France, where Swiss firefighters are helping out.
Swiss firefighters are helping to bring the blaze in southwestern France under control. It has already affected more than 42,000 hectares of land and forced 220,000 people to leave their homes.
“When we arrive, we’re a new, fresh force. There’s always a lot of energy,” says the spokesperson for the Geneva Fire and Rescue Service, which deployed 34 firefighters over the weekend to the outskirts of Bordeaux. “We’re replacing people who’ve been on the ground for several days,” he says, noting that in cases like this, one of the biggest challenges is conserving energy. “You don’t go for a day or two, but for seven days on the front line.”
Despite this year’s prolonged drought, Switzerland has so far been spared large-scale fires. But there is concern ahead of the weekend’s celebrations, with Swiss National Day on August 1. In most cantons fireworks have been banned, but “it only takes one firework to start a fire”, Gianni Boris Pezzatti of the Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research, told Der Bund.
He says that since the scorching summer of 2003, awareness of the issue has been high across the country, and robust preventive measures – above all the ban on lighting outdoor fires during periods of drought – have proved highly effective. However, it remains “important to inform the public that a single thunderstorm is not enough to ease the tension”, Pezzatti adds.
Following the New Year’s Eve fire at the Le Constellation bar in Crans-Montana in which 41 people died and 115 were injured, authorities across Switzerland have tightened fire safety regulations. Now, however, an increasing number of professionals in the hotel, catering and events sectors are criticising what they see as overzealous measures that pose an existential threat to their businesses.
“We mustn’t skimp on safety. But what they’re asking of us is excessive,” a restaurant owner in canton Vaud told Swiss public broadcaster RTS, summing up the discontent felt by many others, whose voices, almost seven months after the tragedy, are beginning to be heard. The manager has had to remove 30 of the 80 seats in his restaurant due to an insufficient number of emergency exits and has had to make two staff members redundant.
Hotel and restaurant managers are also pointing the finger at the companies carrying out the work. Overwhelmed by orders, they are allegedly taking advantage of the situation to inflate prices.
The Établissement cantonal d’assurance (ECA), the fire safety authority for canton Vaud, partly admits to an overreaction but stresses that, had it not acted, the criticism would have been one of inaction. The ECA spokesperson also points out that “these are not new measures, but measures that should already have been enforced had things been done in accordance with the law”. Politicians are also beginning to highlight the need for proportionality. It remains to be seen whether this will result in exemptions for professionals in difficulty, writes RTS.
The Federal Criminal Court has convicted the Geneva-based private bank Lombard Odier for failing to adopt organisational measures to prevent money laundering as part of the trial against Gulnara Karimova, daughter of the former Uzbek president and a former senior figure in the country’s government.
The bank has been ordered to pay a fine of CHF3 million ($3.7 million). One of its former wealth managers was found guilty of money laundering and given a 24-month suspended prison sentence. The Federal Criminal Court has also ordered the confiscation of CHF400 million.
Karimova, who also served as Uzbekistan’s ambassador to the UN in Geneva, was charged with money laundering, breach of trust, corruption and leading a criminal organisation. The Criminal Division of the Federal Criminal Court has dismissed the proceedings against her and another defendant on the grounds of a lasting procedural impediment. Karimova is currently serving a prison sentence in her home country until December 2028, and the Uzbek authorities refuse to allow her to leave before the end of her sentence, by which time the offences alleged by the Office of the Attorney General of Switzerland will already be time-barred.
Karimova had opened several bank accounts with Swiss financial institutions using fronts, accounts which she used to conceal the illicit origin of the funds deposited. According to investigators, the sums involved ran into millions, originating in particular from bribes paid to Karimova by telecommunications companies in exchange for access to the Uzbek market.
Translated from Italian, sub-edited by ts
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