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- Health Minister Alain Berset was the victim of an attempted blackmail by a woman in December 2019. The perpetrator was convicted in September 2020.
- The supervisory authority is now initiating regulatory investigations through the Federal Prosecutor’s Office (AB-BA). These are intended to clarify the conduct of the Federal Prosecutor’s Office in the matter.
This was reported by the French-speaking newspaper “24heures” on its news portal. AB-BA’s response is available to the Keystone-SDA news agency.
“The AB-BA has taken note of the media coverage of the criminal order for attempted extortion of federal councilor Alain Berset,” he says. You have decided to start investigations. The result is open. “It is currently difficult to estimate how long it will take before the results are available.”
It is currently difficult to estimate how long it will take to get results.
Investigations are also eagerly awaited by the federal prosecutor’s courts / subcommittees of the parliamentary business audit committees (GPK). They exercise general supervision over the courts and the federal prosecutor’s office.
Once AB-BA had clarified, the subcommittee would decide whether further action was needed, said National Councilor Manuela Weichelt-Picard (Verdes / ZG), chair of the subcommittee, upon request.
Details remain under lock and key
Last Saturday, “Weltwoche” made public that the Federal Prosecutor’s Office had sentenced a woman to a conditional fine in September for attempted extortion against Federal Councilor Alain Berset. The judgment is final.
The woman is known to have tried to blackmail Berset with private documents a year ago. The Federal Council filed a criminal complaint. According to the criminal order, the author initially asked Berset “to pay an outstanding debt of 100,000 francs”, but later refrained from doing so.
It is not known what the complaints were about or what documents were sent. The sanction order speaks of “serious interests in secrecy, both in personal, family and professional terms” of both parties, so the sanction order has been anonymized and crossed out.
Federal Councilor Berset cannot be blackmailed. As a Federal Councilor, he is unfortunately the victim of criminal acts repeatedly.
Berset’s chief information officer, Peter Lauener, said on Saturday that the blackmail attempt contained “false and defamatory claims” about Berset’s private life eight years ago. As part of the criminal investigation, the authors withdrew their statements. There are no catchy photos or other incriminating information, Lauener said. “Federal Councilor Berset cannot be blackmailed. As a Federal Councilor, he is unfortunately a victim of criminal acts repeatedly. “
The Federal Prosecutor speaks of “usual practice”
According to the Federal Prosecutor’s Office, the data in question were removed from the data carriers secured to the woman so that the data carriers could be returned to the accused. However, the data was not completely removed, but it still existed in the Federal Prosecutor’s Office case files.
The Federal Prosecutor’s Office also stated on Sunday that the procedure and the public edition of the sanction order in question corresponded to the usual practice, since it is used for all sanction orders. The deletion of the author’s data is also justified according to the Federal Police Office (Fedpol) as the executive body of the Federal Prosecutor’s Office. AB-BA is now clarifying this with its own resources.
