Italian delegation joins Crans-Montana fire investigation

Roman investigators find out about the Crans-Montana investigation Keystone-SDA

Six investigators from the public prosecutor's office in Rome will be in Valais on Wednesday. They will be given access to the investigation documents concerning the deadly fire in Crans-Montana on New Year's Day.

+Get the most important news from Switzerland in your inbox

The Italian delegation of judges and police officers will be in the Valais capital of Sion for two days. “The investigative team from the public prosecutor’s office in Rome will be accompanied by an interpreter and will have access to all the documents in the file, which comprises several thousand pages,” explained the Attorney General of the Canton of Valais, Beatrice Pilloud, to the Keystone-SDA news agency on request.

The Italian investigators could inspect the documents, but not make copies of them. In order to obtain a copy of the documents, which do not contain any names, the public prosecutor’s office in Rome must obtain a procedural order from the Valais public prosecutor’s office. With this interim order, the documents can then be sent to Italy.

With the consent of the named persons

In the case of documents containing surnames and first names, the Valais public prosecutor’s office must also obtain the consent of the named persons. They must agree to the documents being forwarded to the Italian investigators. Subsequently, the Valais public prosecutor’s office will again issue interim decisions and can then forward these documents to colleagues or not.

However, the documents may only be used by the public prosecutor’s office in Rome once the decision on the conclusion of an international request for mutual legal assistance has been made.

Promises kept

A Swiss and an Italian delegation led by Beatrice Pilloud and her Rome counterpart Francesco Lo Voi had already met on February 19 at the premises of the Federal Office of Justice in Bern. At that meeting, the Attorney General of Valais confirmed the decision of the public prosecutor’s office to grant a request for mutual legal assistance submitted by the public prosecutor’s office in Rome on January 30 of this year.

At the meeting, the parties also confirmed that the Public Prosecutor’s Office of the Canton of Valais would remain in charge of the proceedings on Swiss territory and would decide, among other things, what evidence would be collected and whether the Italian investigators would be present when it was obtained. This was subsequently announced by the Federal Office of Justice.

Increased cooperation

The arrival of Italian investigators in Sion this week confirms the will of the investigating authorities to cooperate more closely in order to advance the investigation. Six of the 41 victims and 115 injured in the Le Constellation bar accident are from Italy.

Translated from German by AI/jdp

How we work

We select the most relevant news for an international audience and use automatic translation tools to translate them into English. A journalist then reviews the translation for clarity and accuracy before publication.  

Providing you with automatically translated news gives us the time to write more in-depth articles. The news stories we select have been written and carefully fact-checked by an external editorial team from news agencies such as Bloomberg or Keystone.

If you have any questions about how we work, write to us at [e-mail]