In a ruling dated 26 June 2023, received on 18 July, the Swiss Federal Supreme Court dismissed my appeal in the case concerning the attempted misappropriation of data for which I was charged against journalists in Geneva.
For the record, I was accused of trying to illegally obtain the names of people who were stealing my own data and then passing it on to journalists. These journalists took advantage of the situation to leak personal and confidential information about me to the press. Almost ten years later, this memory remains painful. It is all the more painful because the judicial authorities have always refused to investigate the origins of the systematic leaks against me.
Throughout the proceedings, I contested the accusations made against me. Unfortunately, I was not always able to assert my rights, in particular because of the destruction - carried out without my knowledge - of essential telephone taps.
Before the Police Court, the Public Prosecutor requested that I be sentenced to 9 months' imprisonment. On 23 April 2021, the Police Court handed down a suspended sentence of six months' imprisonment. I appealed against this decision to the Criminal Division of the Geneva Court of Justice.
In its ruling of 8 April 2022, this authority - clearly aware of the major grey areas in this case and the serious irregularities committed against me throughout the proceedings - significantly reduced the sentence. It confined itself to imposing a fine of zero days, a totally symbolic penalty.
For the sake of my honour, I decided to appeal against this decision to the Federal Court. I was aware that these steps had little chance of success, as this authority only rules on the basis of the facts retained by the cantonal authority, even in a very troubled context such as this one. The Federal Court can only review these facts in a very limited way, i.e. only in cases of arbitrariness.
In its ruling of 26 June 2023, the Federal Supreme Court essentially held that the facts contained in the Court of Justice's decision were not totally shocking. It also refused to rule on the issue of the numerous telephone taps destroyed, in particular by the Confederation's intelligence service, which could have exonerated me. In a questionable manner, the Federal Court ruled that I should have objected at the time to this destruction. However, the court overlooked the fact that they were carried out without the parties being informed in advance... It was therefore impossible to prevent them in time.
It is clear from this judgment that the Federal Court did not wish to go into detail about this voluminous case. Instead, our High Court upheld the very symbolic sentence of zero days' fine imposed on me. That says a lot about this case...
Despite this half-success, I will never cease to denounce the troubling and disloyal methods used.
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