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Swiss Postbus subsidy fraud case continues with appeal

Fedpol continues proceedings into Postbus subsidy fraud
Fedpol continues proceedings into Postbus subsidy fraud Keystone-SDA

Swiss federal police (Fedpol) have lodged an appeal against the decision of the Bern Commercial Court in the Postbus scandal.

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The court had previously dismissed Fedpol’s charges due to further procedural errors.

In the last rejection, the court had deemed the appointment of two specialists previously employed by the Federal Tax Administration as heads of proceedings to be inadmissible.

Fedpol does not accept this decision from February it informed the news agency Keystone-SDA on request.

The CH-Media newspapers first reported on this. The proceedings are now pending before the Criminal Chamber of the High Court of the Canton of Bern.

Under the relevant administrative criminal law, the investigating authority is not permitted to seek outside assistance, it was further stated. Fedpol had already handed over the management of the proceedings to former federal judge Hans Mathys and cantonal judge Pierre Cornu in the first indictment, which led to the first dismissal in 2020.

The Postbus affair became public in 2018. According to the case, the Swiss Post company had incorrectly booked income from subsidised regional passenger transport since 2007 in order to avoid compensation cuts in subsequent years.

Fedpol issued summary penalty orders against five Postbus managers as well as the head of finance at Swiss Post and a member of the state-owned company’s board of directors. The five accused managers were sentenced to fines of over CHF400,000 in some cases.

However, these sentences are not legally binding, as all seven defendants have not accepted the judgement and are demanding a judgement by a regular criminal court, the CH Media newspapers reported. The Bern Commercial Court has now declared all of these sentences invalid.

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Bern Commercial Criminal Court rejects Postbus case

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Swiss court rejects Postbus fraud case

This content was published on The Bern Commercial Criminal Court has thrown out a fraud case against Postbus due to a “serious deficiency” in police procedures.

Read more: Swiss court rejects Postbus fraud case

Translated from German by DeepL/mga

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