Swiss Attorney General Michael Lauber has come under sustained political pressure because of meetings he held with FIFA President Gianni Infantino. The critics may miss the point, writes Andreas Britt in an essay for finews.first.
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The charge against Michael Lauber is that he met Infantino informally and failed to protocol the meetings with detailed minutes – at a time when the FIFA boss Gianni Infantino became a target for investigators. Also, Lauber went public saying that he didn’t recall one of the meetings – a choice of words reminiscent of suspects standing trial. Several Swiss lawmakers, therefore, decided to stop the upcoming reelection of Lauber.
Booting the attorney general out of office would be reckless. It would be a step in the direction of a trend that was instigated by people such as Julian Assange: everything has to be made available for public scrutiny at all times. The principle of transparency is easy enough to understand and there is evidence galore speaking in its favor – kleptocrats, brutal dictators, the mafia, they all rightly fear the public’s gaze.
«Michael Lauber was ill-advised in his choice of words»
But the focus on details and everyday events has diverted our attention from what matters most. The goals are no longer at the center of our attention, but instead the means that are being used to achieve them. Instead of measuring our people of power by how well they’re doing in meeting the targets we set, we have taken to looking into how they are performing their everyday life. This is undermining trust in their capabilities and removes the necessary leeway they need to fulfill their tasks. The attorney general’s job is to make sure that the most complex of Switzerland’s legal cases are being conducted in an irreproachable fashion.
I expect the attorney general to meet people in sensitive roles regularly and I don’t want him to report on these meetings at all times. What can the general public possibly gain from knowing about Lauber’s contacts? Such meetings are completely irrelevant as long as they don’t stand in the way of a successful criminal proceeding.
«What the central bank's governors discussed is being kept out of the public's eye»
For sure, Lauber was ill-advised in his choice of words. It isn’t a particularly authoritative way to handle a journalist’s inquiry to claim that you can’t remember. An example from another world may serve as an illustration: the media office at the Swiss National Bank has honed its skill in making journalists’ questions come to nothing – much to the irritation of the latter. Werner Abegg, the former veteran spokesman was a diehard supporter of the «no news is good news» school of thought – and the phone calls with Abegg were notoriously curt and mostly devoid of breaking news content.
The SNB media office's strongly held conviction that publicity wasn’t to be dictated by the outside meant that every word uttered by a representative of the SNB was treasured and valued as pure gold. This is an extreme case and the merits of such a strategy designed for what essentially is an authority serving the general public may be debatable. But there are advantages to be considered, because it kept the bank’s core aim, maintaining price stability, in the focus. And what the three governors discussed with whom and when was kept out of the public’s eye.
«Compliance doesn't generate revenue. Controlling bodies don't improve performance.»
The flood of legal cases affecting Swiss banking over the past decade had one important consequence: a massive expansion of legal and compliance at every single financial firm. Compliance, a division that isn't generating revenue, achieved a position of authority within banking – much to the chagrin of the experienced bankers. And what seems to work for the private sector has become a reality at the public administration as well. Today, every major incident invariably leads to the recommendation that a new controlling body should be set up. The best-known victim of this trend is the Federal Intelligence Service which today is being controlled by several mutually independent bodies and parliamentary commissions.
The urge to make everything available for public scrutiny at all times essentially leads to a restriction of the room for maneuver, incapacitation of people in authority and a loss of trust in the administration – and, last but not least, to an expansion of the government apparatus without an increase of its performance.
Andreas Britt is a writer and author at finews.com. He studied political science at the London School of Economics. After completing his studies, he worked as a reporter and editor at «Bloomberg News» in Zurich and Stockholm and specialized in political and macroeconomic topics. Before joining finews.com in 2015, Britt worked for eight years at the Swiss federal administration as a political scientist and manager.
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