Switzerland Today

Hello from Bern,

What do a hacker, a high earner on a house hunt and a head of state have in common? They are all in today’s briefing. But first the news.

Kunsthaus Zurich

In the News: Stolen art, medicine sales to Russia, corona leaks, and women on executive boards.

• Swiss police are investigating the possible theft of two 17th-century paintings from the Kunsthaus Zurich, Switzerland’s largest art museum. They were two of the museum’s 700 works that had been sent for cleaning and restoration following a fire on August 2-3. One is by Flemish artist Robert van den Hoecke and the other is by Dutch painter Dirck de Bray.
• The control committees of both parliamentary chambers have decided to open an investigation into leaks to the mediaExternal link from the office of Alain Berset, who holds the rotating Swiss presidency. The leaks concerned Covid-19 measures adopted by the Federal Council during the height of the pandemic.
• Swiss exports of pharmaceuticals to Russia, which are not subject to sanctions, reached a 30-year record last year, buoyed by high prices. Due to pharmaceutical sales, total exports to Russia dipped by only around 6% compared with the previous year despite sanctions. As a comparison, German export revenues to Russia almost halved last year, according to the German statistical office.
• Around a quarter of executive board seats at the largest listed Swiss companies are held by women. In 2021, that number was 19%. That’s the largest increase of any European country last year, according to an analysis by a human resources consultancy. This puts Switzerland in sixth place in a European ranking after the UK, Norway, Sweden, Finland and France.

© Keystone

Swiss hacktivist gets on the CIA’s bad side for finding a security loophole.

If you’ve never heard of Tillie Kottmann, maybe you’ve heard of Maia Arson Crimew. And, if you’re still stuck, just try googling one of these names and you’re sure to get the gist of why the hacker from Lucerne caught the attention of the CIA a few days ago.

Kottmann describes herself as a hacktivist and cyber security researcher who claims to publish data she deems in the public’s interest. Swiss daily 20 MinutenExternal link reported that Kottmann published the “no fly list” of the US Transportation Security Administration (TSA) on Monday. It contains the names of 1.5 million people considered dangerous by the US.

The data was on an unsecured computer server hosted by CommuteAir, a regional airline based in Ohio. Kottmann explained how she obtained the confidential information on her blog and defended her decision to publish it, explaining that the list was obsolete and dated from 2019. She added that among the millions of entries, “there was a clear trend towards Arabic and Russian sounding names”.

The data leak has caused an uproar in the US, where politicians called for a Congressional investigation. TSA told CNN it is investigatingExternal link the “incident”. One Republican politician called the leak a “civil liberties nightmare”.

For more about Kottmann/Crimew, here’s a video portrait Swiss public television, SRF, did of her.

© Keystone / Christian Beutler

Even high earners have trouble finding houses in Switzerland.

Money can’t buy everything. Well, at least a lot of money is no guarantee when it comes to house hunting in Switzerland. The situation is most acute in Zurich, where the vacancy rate is as low as 0.07%, writes the Tages-Anzeiger today. Only 161 apartments are empty, 220 fewer than at this time last year.

“Looking for an apartment in Zurich is like playing the lottery,” said Imrane Guda, a 31-year-old Zurich native who works as a management assistant at a big corporation. “If you can’t get an apartment through connections or don’t have an enormous budget at your disposal, you need a lot of patience and nerves of steel.” Guda applied for more than 20 apartments with no luck. Five months later, she’s now back living with her parents.

The problem finding an apartmentExternal link isn’t just reserved for low earners, students and interns looking for cheap digs in one of the most expensive cities in the world. As the paper explains, the housing situation is the result of multiple overlapping factors. Above all, the city is growing, the number of advertised apartments is decreasing, and they are advertised for a shorter period of time.

But anyone who thinks building new high-rises will solve the problem has another thing coming. New buildings just mean new high prices. Moreover, there are already 3,000 households in Zurich that have been kicked out of their apartments to make way for new construction.