Here I am lying on a concrete slab in a dank prison cell, wearing nothing but used prison overalls. It’s the middle of winter and, for the first time in my 70 years, I am in solitary confinement, being denied water and medicine. An hour earlier, on orders of the Swiss Government, Portuguese Judiciary Police shoved my wife aside and entered our apartment flashing a Swiss EU arrest warrant (despite Switzerland not being an EU member state, although it is in the Schengen Area). They bundled me into an unmarked car and incarcerated me in Funchal’s maximum security prison on the island of Madeira, where a guard forced me to strip stark naked.
This harrowing story began just after I blew the whistle on widespread currency manipulation to US, UK and EU regulators.
Shortly after I denounced that corruption, an ethnic Persian named Asis Djavanbakht knocks on my door and introduces himself as Andreas Ambach. He explains that changed his name when he relocated from Germany to Switzerland to marry his cousin. I find it strange that he is already well aware of my tip-off to regulators and even knows that I am awaiting a substantial whistleblower award.
He still has an investment with the company that just fired him, and is furious that they have replaced him with his brother Piruz Djavanbakht, whom he imagines is defrauding him.
Until now, a Swiss law firm mentioned in the Paradise Papers scandal, Bihrer AG, has been protecting Ambach’s interests; but Ambach thinks they are overcharging him. For weeks, he begs me to take over as his advisor and to support him until it’s sold. Always willing to help others, I finally agree, and he dispenses with Bihrer AG as his legal representatives.
Ambach makes a solemn promise to pay me for my services once his investment is sold. Little do I know he is already intending to disregard my years of free labour and repay me and family for our support with immeasurable harm, including, persecution, imprisonment and torture.
Blackmail
After six years, the investment is sold, he becomes very aggressive, and—despite having signed an agreement—he refuses to pay for my services. He needs the money to obtain CEO status in his new job and immediately re-hires his friend and real estate lawyer, Olivier Vuillaume at Bihrer AG, who discredits and threatens me with criminal defamation charges unless I sign their blackmail letters.
It’s common practice for Swiss lawyers to use threats of criminal action to intimidate creditors in order to help their clients avoid paying debts. State prosecutors and police are always eager to aid them, because they can invoke the spectre of defamation, which is treated far more seriously than fraud in Switzerland.
According to his brother, Ambach’s split personality has terrified many other people, to the extent that his own mother wants nothing do with him. Outraged, and feeling betrayed that I wrote to his brother intimating that I no longer supported him, Ambach is determined to get revenge. Together, he and Vuillaume engineer ways for the City of Zurich to receive the money Ambach owes me instead.
I refuse to sign their blackmail letters and they file criminal defamation charges. A Zurich prosecutor orders police to interrogate my debt collector (70) and my ex-wife (68) and have my correspondence monitored, while Vuillaume triggers an international police manhunt for me.
Two years after receiving my invoice, Ambach finally coughs up the 25,000 francs he owes me. I sense that he views it as a bribe, and he swears to recoup it later using every means available.
Later, a Swiss prosecutor—not a judge, but a government employee—holds a clandestine trial in my absence and convicts me of insulting and defaming Ambach by having sent invoice reminders. She issues two fines totalling 35,000 francs. One is for 28,800 francs, suspended for two years; the other for 6,200, payable immediately. The amount is calculated on the basis of my 1,350-franc monthly pension income. I am unaware of all this, and equally unaware that she has framed new charges and snatched back the 25,000 that Ambach paid. Including a fine of 10,000, she has lifted a total of 35,000 francs directly from my bank account without my knowledge.
Prison
However, this is not enough in the land of milk and money. Seeking a three-year prison sentence for my writing complaints to its authorities, the Federal Office of Justice issues a Schengen warrant for my extradition.
To date, this Swiss gang of nepotists has had me arrested and imprisoned in solitary confinement in Portugal and the Netherlands.
Hearing how Swiss and Portuguese prosecutors had lied in order to deceive courts and pervert the rule of law in my case, Portugal’s supreme court rejected the extradition and the Portuguese prosecutor resigned. This is why I remain out of Switzerland’s physical clutches today.
Seventeen months later, a Dutch prosecutor ignored Portugal’s supreme court decision and findings and played fast and loose with facts presented to judges.
Several lawyers during the extradition trial viewed Switzerland’s persecution as retaliation for my exposing widespread corruption in the foreign exchange market that spanned three continents.
As with other Swiss authorities, Switzerland’s federal Attorney General blatantly ignores several lawyers’ requests to terminate the proceedings and withdraw their extradition on the basis that it is fundamentally flawed in a number of critical respects, such as the lack of an evidential basis for the criminal investigation.
Despite this, the Swiss Government continues to maintains its Schengen arrest warrant for me permanently active.
Oppression by spreadsheet
The EU’s Schengen Information System (SIS ll) and other massive EU data systems have become tools of preference used by state prosecutors to silence and oppress free speech and expression. They are are now being wielded disproportionately by prosecutors who are now de facto EU-trained, largely "robotically" by computer software. The abuse of power by those with privileged positions presents a clear and present danger for society everywhere, especially whistleblowers, whom Swiss authorities hate with a vengeance.
This Swiss gang’s determination to maintain the Schengen warrant against me permanently active is not only in support of Ambach’s lust for revenge and desire to torment and control our lives, but also to protect him and his accomplices from future prosecutions.
Vuillaume solemnly promised, seven years ago, that his and Ambach’s vendetta would eventually lead to profound consequences and repercussions for me and will continue to affect me and my family for the rest of our lives. He repeatedly threatened that his goal was to weaponise the legal system in order to protect Ambach and silence a whistleblower.
Lawyers, prosecutors or employers in civilised democracies do not use taxpayer money to terrorise and imprison employees or whistleblowers who complain, nor do they criminalise language. Such sinister behaviour should be addressed and Switzerland’s government asked why it ignores the standard of the presumption of innocence and why it holds the world’s highest number of prisoners without trial (many of whom sadly commit suicide) and why the separation of powers and Habeas Corpus do not exist in a country that claims to be a democracy.
As long as secrecy, nepotism, and protectionism continue to thrive in Switzerland, its lawyers and the state prosecutors will continue to profit from archaic criminal defamation laws—and their legal profession, actually more of an industry, will remain protected and immune.
How the blackmail works
Below, translated from German, are excerpts from Olivier Vuillaume’s menacing letters to me on behalf of my debtor, Andreas Ambach. It should be borne in mind that Vuillaume is not qualified to practise criminal law, and that Swiss law forbids lawyers from threatening criminal action to save their clients from debts.
- If you are compliant now and stop bothering my client, there might still be a lucky ending for you. If not, not.
- Mr Ambach, without any prejudice, wants to make you an offer to settle this matter out of court. I will revert to you next week with a draft agreement accordingly.
- If you want to resolve this conflict, you must sign these undertakings.
- I have drawn them up on behalf of Andreas Ambach, in German, as the charges in question have an impact in Switzerland.
- Whether you sign these or not is entirely your decision, but consider what kind of signal you are sending if you do not sign them.
- I can imagine that having your ex-wife and debt collector interrogated by police is unpleasant. Equally, your complaints will not be entertained.
- Ambach’s offers are without any legal repercussions and not intended for use in court.
- The involvement of Swiss police has now been triggered and international police action will also follow; this was solely an act of defence against your complaints.
- I believe it is still possible to stop law enforcement agencies before further reactions occur.
- Any Swiss lawyer will tell you that there cannot be a better deal for you.
If I were to sign, Vuillaume told me, Ambach would:
- refrain from filing a criminal defamation complaint against you.
- be protected by law and there will [thus] no longer be an urgent need for him to ask for police and prosecutor protection.
- not file criminal defamation charges against you, although he will not renounce the right to do so.
- nonetheless, still reserve rights to hold you legally responsible for damages he has suffered.
- cease to require protection from the authorities.
- declare a moratorium on putting you and your family in further trouble with police and prosecutors.
- declare a lack of interest in further prosecutions against you.
- call off law enforcement before any further reactions occur.
- discontinue the criminal proceedings he initiated that continue to influence your life.
- withdraw claims against you and stop pressing criminal charges against you.
- resolve this matter amicably, out of court.
- pay you the debt he owes and negotiate everything else fairly with you.
Should I accede, my obligations would be to:
- notarise the agreements, stating your place of residence.
- pay legal fees Mr Ambach has incurred.
- strike Mr Ambach’s debt out of the state debt collection register.
- rescind all proceedings that you and your debt collector have initiated against Mr Ambach.
- disclose all communications and withdraw all statements you made to third parties.
- undertake not to initiate any further proceedings of any kind against Mr Ambach.
- do everything to prevent a recurrence of financial and reputational damage to Mr Ambach.
- upon receipt of payment of your invoice (less fees), agree that all your claims are settled.
- refrain from making any further statements about Mr Ambach and/or those around him.
If I did not sign, Ambach would:
- file a criminal complaint.
- stop negotiating, and I will continue to seek his protection, invoking the services of prosecutors and police.
- use all his determination and all legal means at his disposal to have you criminally charged.
- press criminal defamation charges against you.
- get you into deeper trouble with Swiss law enforcement.
- reserve all other rights against you.
Image: Solitary confinement cell, Jacques Cartier Prison (France), Édouard Hue | licence CC BY–SA 3.0
