Swiss uncover mafia activity dating to 1994

Swiss prosecutors on Friday said that they had uncovered a mafia organisation that has been involved in drug and arms trafficking as well as money laundering dating as far back as 1994.

Published: 21 October 2011 17:10 CEST

“The Attorney-General’s Office believes that it has collected sufficient elements to prove the existence of an autonomous criminal organisation active in Switzerland since 1994 at least,” it said.

“This organisation operates on the Zurich-Ticino-Italy axis, essentially in the areas of international drug trafficking, international arms trafficking with Italy as the destination and money laundering,” it added.

The attorney-general was therefore charging 13 people for their involvement in the group, which had close links with the traditional southern Italian Calabria mafia, the ‘Ndrangheta.

Among illegal activities carried by the group were the trafficking of drugs including over 14 kilogrammes (30 pounds) of cocaine, trafficking of 285 firearms and the laundering of over 15 million francs.

The group was in particular accused of embezzling funds from the Zurich-based companies World Financial Services AG and PP Finanz Service GmbH.

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Two victims suffered serious wounds, police said. The attacker was also in hospital being treated for injuries that investigators said were self-inflicted.

The man was “believed to be of foreign origin” and was aged about 40, police said in a statement which added that he was thought to have acted alone.

All of the injured remained hospitalised late Wednesday.

Armed with “sharpened or pointed” metal weapons, the man first lashed out at a passer-by at the railway station in the town of 12,000 people in the Aargau canton, about 60 kilometres (38 miles) west of Zurich, police said.

He then wounded several people seemingly at random before entering a house, police added.

Among those attacked were two teachers from the Zofingen cantonal school, the institution’s director, Patrick Strossler, told 20minuten.ch news website.

The Aargauer Zeitung newspaper quoted one man as saying his pregnant wife had been among those attacked. She was cut in the face but her life was not threatened.

After two hours of negotiations with a specialised team, the man was arrested in the house, police said. The suspect had injured himself and was taken to hospital, said Bernhard Graser, a police spokesman.

Graser told the Zofinger Tagblatt newspaper that the attacker’s injuries were self-inflicted.

Police have called for witnesses to share video or photos that may be useful for their investigation.

Images shown by Aargauer Zeitung showed a large deployment of police and emergency vehicles. The security forces had assault rifles and bullet-proof vests.

A police helicopter landed on a nearby sports field, causing the local youth football team to cut short a training session, the newspaper said.