Last April, the cover of Bloomberg Businessweek marked Switzerland’s funeral with a white cross decorated with flowers on a red background and a succinct sentence: “Will there be an afterlife for the Swiss banking system?”? Some institutional protests followed, but nothing more. These were the months of the collapse of Credit Suisse and its takeover by UBS. During these months, Switzerland also found itself in the crossfire of law firms because of its cautious attitude towards the sale of military assets to Ukraine. An internal law on the principle of neutrality between the warring parties prohibits the resale of unused military vehicles. The obstacle was removed a few days ago when the Swiss Parliament approved the sale of 25 leopards to Germany.
Certainly, one sector that has experienced fewer crises is, surprisingly, the publishing sector, particularly the sector closely linked to the conservative political wing of the UDC and part of the country’s corporate sector. We’re talking about Weltwoche, the politically incorrect weekly newspaper in German-speaking Switzerland directed by Roger Koeppel, whose subscriptions have increased to over 38,000 copies and which is now preparing to appear on the German stage. The web version reaches 6 million readers a month, in addition to the 4 of the YouTube channel, in which its director (and majority shareholder), fresh from a trip to Moscow in May, tells every day his version of the political facts and on the Swiss economy, but not only.
Roger Koeppel, a graduate of the University of Zurich in political philosophy with a thesis on Carl Schmitt and a journalist, is a national councilor in the ranks of the UDC and has long been considered Christoph Blocher’s heir. He would forego his candidacy in the next federal election in October in order to devote himself entirely to the development of the company. When he became editor-in-chief in 2001, the liberal-leaning newspaper was suffering from declining circulation. It was taken over by some financial investors, including Tito Tettamanti, and converted into a weekly magazine in 2002. with a conservative neoliberal characterin clear agreement with the positions of the UDC, which has never left the first party podium since 1999, with an average preference of Swiss voters between 23 and 30%.
This ensured the newspaper’s survival in difficult times. Thanks also to the financial support of the Blocher family themselves, through its investments Ems-Chemie AG and Basler Zeitung AG. The latter was then bought in 2018 by the Tamedia Group (now TX Group) led by Pietro Supino, the second largest Swiss media company after the public broadcaster RTS. In the Swiss Panorama, the third publishing group is Ringier SA, which has a turnover of around one billion francs and is owned by the married couple Michael and Ellen Ringier. Ringier SA recently bought back all of Axel Springer’s shares In a joint venture with the German publisher Ringier-Axel Springer Schweiz AG, it becomes the sole owner of twenty newspapers and magazines distributed in German and French-speaking Switzerland, including Blick and Finanz. The new entity will be called Ringier Médias Suisse. Ringier and Springer have been working together for years on numerous well-known publications such as Newsweek and Forbes. To this day it is a joint venture between the two publishers on the Polish market.
In 2017, after selling the Basler Zeitung to Tamedia, Christoph Blocher took over the shares in the Zehnder AG publishing group (now Schweizer Regiomedia AG) with a portfolio of 25 local and national free newspapers distributed throughout Eastern Switzerland. But over the years, Weltowoche has not remained free of controversy in the Swiss political landscape. In August 2011, an employee of the Swiss private bank Safra Sarasin handed over to a UDC parliamentarian the account statement on the currency transactions of the then SNB President Philipp Hildebrand, due to an alleged insider trading operation, i.e. exchanging dollars for francs, a few weeks before the SNB made its decision to support it of the Swiss franc price was announced. The excerpt reached Weltwoche, which published it. Hildebrand was forced to resign in January 2012. In April 2016, the dispute ended with the Zurich district court fining the UDC city councilor and the bank’s IT engineer who handed him the papers for violating banking secrecy.
To end recently with the well-known investigative site Inside Paradeplatz, from the square of the same name in Zurich, the former headquarters of Credit Suisse, which is seen by many as an ideological offshoot of Weltwoche. The website, founded by Lucas Haessig, one of its former business journalists, fell victim to a legal dispute by the former Swiss institute, which was concluded with an out-of-court settlement at the end of August. Despite the presence of large publishing groups Switzerland’s liberal-conservative right can count on territorial presence and a certain level of investigative journalismas well as the assets of the Blocher family and other financial investors. Christoph Blocher’s two daughters, Rahel and Magdalena, have taken over their father’s business and are considered one of the richest women in Switzerland after Franca Fissolo (Ferrero’s widow) and Dona Bertarelli. Magdalena Martullo Blocher is currently a National Councilor on the lists of the UDC Graubünden.
But the Swiss right and its media play an important role, especially at the international political level. This is proven by conferences, interviews and contacts between Roger Koeppel and his weekly magazine with some protagonists of the political and media scene, such as: Eric Zemmour And Steve Bannon. A strong identification and economic and financial competence then determined the success of the Weltwoche.
Friedrich Magnani, October 15, 2023