Abusive award for FDP President Burkart and former SVP member of the Council of States
Investigativ.ch’s «Golden Brake Pad» award goes in 2024 to Thierry Burkart, a member of the Council of States from Aargau and president of the FDP Switzerland, as well as to Alex Kuprecht, a former SVP member of the Council of States from Schwyz. This decision stems from a postulate submitted by the Council of States« Economic Commission following the publication of the so-called »Suisse Secrets.”.
The Investigativ.ch research network announced the award on Wednesday. It has been awarding the "Golden Brake Block" since 2014 to people it accuses of preventing information.
While the National Council adopted a motion to strengthen press freedom in the banking and financial sector as a result of the "Suisse Secrets" revelations, the Council of States steered the discussion in a completely different direction, Investigativ.ch wrote in its press release. In December 2023, it approved a postulate from its Economic Affairs Committee entitled "Handling the further use of illegally acquired data".
Kuprecht was President of the Economic Committee of the Council of States at the time. Burkart acted as committee rapporteur during the debate in the small chamber.
With the motion, the small chamber instructed the Federal Council to examine whether the publication of illegally collected data should be made a criminal offense. In the view of the research network, this would be tantamount to tightening the current provisions. According to the organization, this would not only affect bank data, but all confidential information in general.
Debate about media freedom
The publication of the "Suisse Secrets" in February 2022 triggered a domestic political debate about media freedom in Switzerland. An international research network - including with South German Newspaper, Guardian, Le Monde and the New York Times - accused the major bank Credit Suisse of having accepted autocrats, drug dealers, suspected war criminals and human traffickers as clients for years.
However, Swiss media representatives were unable to take part in the research. The reason for this is that it is a criminal offense in Switzerland to publish information that falls under bank client confidentiality. (SDA/swi)
