Unfaithful FEDRO employee: 9 million damage to Switzerland?
The Federal Office of Public Prosecutions brought charges at the Federal Criminal Court against a former civil servant and two members of the board of directors of a car importer
The Office of the Attorney General of Switzerland has brought charges before the Federal Criminal Court against a former employee of the Federal Roads Office (FEDRO) and two board members of a car importer.
CO2 Act: for Switzerland and the cantons it is a must
According to the indictment, the two advisors paid the FEDRO employee to change the relevant data for calculating the CO2 penalties, thereby preventing the company from paying penalties over a period of more than three years.
This resulted in a loss of around 9 million Swiss francs for the federal government.
Serious breach of CO2 regulations introduced in 2012
In 2012, Switzerland introduced CO2 emission regulations for first-time registered cars with the aim of reducing carbon dioxide emissions from new cars to an average of 130 g CO2/km by the end of 2015.
If the average CO2 emissions of all vehicles of an importer exceed this threshold, the federal government will charge a corresponding carbon dioxide penalty.
Switzerland’s long-term climate strategy
Federal Council approves Swiss Green Fintech network
Registration of imports, billing of the CO2 penalty and collection are the responsibility of the Federal Office of Energy (FOE) and FEDRO.
In September 2017, based on a complaint by FEDRO, the Federal Public Prosecutor’s Office opened criminal proceedings against the FEDRO employee and then extended them to the two board members.
After extensive investigations, the MPC has now brought charges against the former employee of the Federal Roads Office for repeated forgery of documents drawn up by public officials or civil servants (Article 317 paragraph 1 of the Criminal Code, CP), repeated passive bribery (Article 322 quater, CP), tax fraud committed by trade (Article 14, paragraph 4 of the Federal Act on Administrative Criminal Law, DPA) and repeated fraudulent obtaining of a false certification (Article 15, paragraph 1, DPA).
An App to streamline the work of Swiss farmers
Switzerland will have an ad hoc ambassador for… science
The other two defendants are charged with the offences of repeatedly inciting public officials to falsify documents (Art. 317 para. 1 in conjunction with Art. 24 para. 1 of the Swiss Criminal Code), repeated active bribery (Art. 322 ter of the Swiss Criminal Code), committing tax fraud by trade (Art. 14 para. 4 of the Swiss Penal Code) and repeatedly obtaining false certification (Art. 15 para. 1 of the Swiss Penal Code).
False recording and manipulation of data between 2014 and 2017
From May 2012 to September 2017, the former FEDRO employee worked as a technical officer in the Road Traffic Division.
He is accused of manipulating data relevant to the imposition of CO2 penalties in FEDRO’s computer systems from June 2014 to September 2017 in favor of the aforementioned vehicle import company.
Dairy products and agrotourism? Excellent in Switzerland
Booming Swiss alpine economy depends on unions
In return, the two board members are said to have handed over a monthly cash payment of CHF 2,000.
Thanks to this manipulation, the vehicle importer did not have to pay CO2 penalties in the years 2015 to 2017 on the vehicles he imported.
If the data had been recorded correctly, the CO2 penalties would have amounted to approximately 9 million CHF during this period.
As usual, the MPC makes the complaints known at the hearing before the Federal Criminal Court.
At the Federal Office for the Environment there will be Petra Zimmermann
The grape harvest 2020 in Switzerland? Scarce, but excellent…
