The man's voice is white. He obviously accuses the blow. “Half a dozen police officers and a prosecutor landed in my office and at my home and got their hands on my computer, my phone and documents. If information of public interest on banking embezzlement can no longer be published, what remains of the role of journalism? »»is indignant Lukas Hässig, publisher of “Inside Paradeplatz”, a very followed blog on the financial center of Zurich, one of the most important in Europe. The man, who is not a revolutionary, is not even a journalist of investigation. For years, he has been having chosen the mysteries of Zurich financial life with meticulousness and exhaustiveness, identifying both the glorious maneuvers and the illegal operations. Should he have refrained from talking about the seconds?
The fact remains that, nine years after being the first to evoke the embezzlement of the earthy Pierin Vincenz, then director of the Raiffeisen bank-the latter has since been condemned by the courts for fraud, qualified unfair management and passive private corruption-, Lukas Hässig is now in the collimator of justice. On June 3, the Zurich public prosecutor decided that the protection of the journalist's sources did not weigh in the face of his desire to regain the origin of the leaks. “Razzia” at his private home is a first in a context of hardening of relations between the press and the powerful Swiss financial sector.
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Source: Lemonde