BVK affair: Arthur Rutishauser acquitted
The Zurich District Court has acquitted Zurich journalist Arthur Rutishauser. The defendant had reported on the BVK affair in two articles in 2012, repeatedly quoting from the then still secret Puk report of the Zurich Cantonal Council.
Due to the great public interest in the BVK scandal, the court on Thursday acquitted 49-year-old Rutishauser of the charge of publishing official secret proceedings. The penalty order of the governor's office of the district of Zurich was thus annulled. The latter had found Rutishauser guilty in March 2013 and sentenced him to a fine of 800 francs. According to the indictment, the current editor-in-chief of the Sonntagszeitung had published two articles about the corruption case at the BVK pension fund in the Tages-Anzeiger on August 28, 2012, and September 10, 2012. In doing so, he quoted around a dozen times passages from the draft of the final report of the Parliamentary Investigation Commission (Puk) of the Zurich Cantonal Council, which was still kept under lock and key.It was thus perfectly clear to the defendant that he had quoted from a secret paper "which was therefore not intended for the public," the criminal order of the governor's office stated.
Public interest outweighed
The district court now saw it differently and followed the defense's argumentation. In this case, the defense had rated the public interest higher than official secrecy. The defense counsel also claimed that Rutishauser had fulfilled all his journalistic duties. In addition, the in-house lawyer of the Tages-Anzeiger had also given his blessing to the reports before they were published. After weighing up the interests involved, the court acquitted Rutishauser and awarded the defendant compensation of 3,000 Swiss francs. He had known that the report was secret. But in this case he could invoke grounds for justification, the president of the court explained. The verdict is not yet legally binding. (SDA)
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