The blackmail scandal about lovers
Parliamentary scrutiny acquits Berset
Federal councilor Alain Berset did nothing wrong with dealing with the extortion of his ex-lover. Two parliamentary control committees came to this conclusion.
Published: 06/14/2022 at 2:00 p.m.
|
Updated: 8:37 a.m.
Sophie Reinhardt, Pascal Tischhauser
All went well in the face of an attempted blackmail by federal councilor Alain Berset (50) by his former lover. This conclusion was reached by two economic audit committees (GPK) of the National Council and the Council of State.
The Federal Public Prosecutor’s Office (BA) did not treat the Minister of Internal Affairs of the SP in a privileged manner, and the Federal Criminal Police did not conduct a disproportionate operation of the war police at the blackmailer’s place of residence.
100,000 francs required
According to GPK, the fact that the Federal Council first engaged its then Secretary General Lukas Bruhin, when Berset’s ex-girlfriend blackmailed him for 100,000 francs and then Bruhin tried to dissuade the woman from blackmailing. Berset did not later engage his then communications chief, Peter Lauener. Their workload was justified.
The fact that Alain Berset used the Federal Council limousine on September 23, 2012 to return from southern Germany alone after a weekend with his mistress does not violate the law, as NZZ am Sonntag suggested.
The Berset case: Were the emails really deleted? (00:45)
The hotel has paid off?
Above all, however, Berset paid for his hotel accommodation in Freiburg in Breisgau himself, and not – as you might have thought – through the state treasury.
Due to the respect of the division of powers, the audit committees do not evaluate the extensive editing made in the criminal warrant against the blackmailer. This leaves nothing that the two GPKs could complain about.
No mistakes were made
From the point of view of the members of the GPK in the General Secretariat of the Department of the Interior, Alain Berset and Berset himself did not make any mistakes in the attempted blackmail which Weltwoche made public.
The two GPKs contradict the statement that Berset had “abused its federal officials for personal history and squandered tax money” which, according to Weltwoche, emerges from the criminal records. However, employees of GPK and the presidium of the responsible GPK subcommittees had access to criminal records and did not share this impression.
You may also be interested in this