Hinduja family to stand trial in Switzerland for exploiting domestic help

Symbolic image © Keystone / Gaetan Bally

Four members of the Hinduja household, a family of billionaires at the head of an Indian industrial conglomerate, are due to appear in court in Geneva on Monday.

They are charged with human trafficking and usury. These charges will be contested by the defendants on Monday at the Tribunal correctionnel of canton Geneva that is competent to judge offences for which the Public Prosecutor’s Office intends to request a custodial sentence of more than two years but not exceeding 10 years.

Three complainants accuse four members of the Hinduja family of having exploited them as domestic servants in Switzerland. According to the indictment, the complainants were recruited in India and came from very poor backgrounds with little education.

The family allegedly brought them to Switzerland to work on the property in Cologny near Geneva “with the aim of exploiting their labour”. These employees were accommodated on site but were housed in precarious conditions in the basement of the villa. For several years, the indictment alleges, some of them slept in an underground bomb shelter on bunk beds.

Dependency

The Public Prosecutor’s Office claims that they had to work every day, from dawn until late in the evening or at night, with no day off, no compensation for overtime, and holidays imposed and not paid. The salary, paid in Indian rupees, would have amounted to a few hundred francs a month. It was not always paid.

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Without passports, confiscated by their employers, without speaking the language, without friends or family, without residence and work permits, they were totally isolated. According to the Public Prosecutor’s Office, the family exploited the situation of dependence and complete unfamiliarity with the place in which these domestic workers lived.

Complaints withdrawn

The first complainant, a 58-year-old Indian woman, worked for the family between 1997 and 2018, with a break of around two years. She followed the family on many trips, mainly to look after the children of the Hinduja household. Denouncing a climate of fear, she finally lodged a complaint in 2018, as did the other two complainants.

One of them, a 45-year-old Indian, worked in 2008-2009 and 2017-2018 as a domestic employee, mostly as a cook. Finally, the third complainant, aged 51, worked for the family between 2009 and 2016 under similar conditions.

Three other former employees withdrew their complaints during the proceedings. According to the Public Prosecutor’s Office, around fifteen other people were recruited to work in the Cologny villa under similar exploitative conditions, but they could not be identified or located.

Acquittal plea

The defence, which has lodged numerous appeals against the decisions of the Public Prosecutor’s Office and the Criminal Court, is contesting the charges. The challenge to the presiding judge remains pending.

“Our clients will plead acquittal. Numerous preliminary questions will be presented, as the botched investigation of the proceedings, based on numerous lies, requires numerous additions. For example, we still do not have access to the complete case file,” Romain Jordan, one of the defence lawyers, told press agency Keystone-SDA.

The Hinduja family is considered to be one of the richest in the United Kingdom. One of the accused, who has Swiss nationality like the rest of his family, is chairman of the Hinduja group in Europe. This conglomerate is active in banking, finance, transport, energy, media and healthcare, among other sectors.

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