The denial of Kaspar Villiger was clear. I was not informed of this intelligence operation said last Wednesday the former radical federal adviser in a document intended for the drafting of the 24 hours. He claimed that the CIA documents on the Crypto AG case were wrong regarding his role in this spying scandal. He would have known nothing, even when he was Minister of Defense in the 1990s.
Ten days later, the word of Kaspar Villiger is questioned, not by documents of the American and German secret services as before, but by an internal confidential paper of the Federal Council. This is a position paper signed by the head of the Federal Defense Department (DDPS) Viola Amherd (PDC) and sent to government colleagues on December 17, 2019. This document, the content of which has not yet been made public, is the first official source in Switzerland according to which people within the Swiss government could have been implied in the Crypto AG affair, indicates our colleagues of the Vaud daily newspaper.
An explosive discovery
In fact, the Federal Councilor’s discussion paper is several months old. Certain units of the DDPS were indeed informed since last last of the researches on Crypto AG carried out by the Rundschau emission of the Almanic television. Last fall, the Christian Democratic Minister became aware of the explosive potential of the issue. His department therefore conducted its own internal investigation to clarify the facts.
In November, the Federal Council also set up a working group to search for traces of the Crypto AG affair in the federal administration. On December 17, although there are still many open questions, Viola Amherd takes stock of the progress of these investigations and informs her colleagues of an explosive discovery, of which she herself only became aware the day before.
Kaspar Villiger will have to explain
That day, the director of the Confederation’s Intelligence Service (SRC) Jean-Philippe Gaudin informed her that several documents relating to Crypto AG had been discovered in an old intelligence archive, Viola Amherd explained to the other federal advisers. She writes the following sentence: They (note: the documents found) indicate that the former head of the DMF K. Villiger was informed. The fact that the head of the DDPS confirms that Kaspar Villiger was indeed aware of the double game of Crypto AG will force the latter to explain again.
(lhu / 20 minutes)
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