New chapter in the Zurich data scandal: More data carriers and piles of files from the Zurich Ministry of Justice have surfaced. Environmental leader Roland Gisler (58) handed this over to the authorities on Monday morning in the cantonal council of Zurich. He drove up with several suitcases and boxes of documents and about 20 hard drives, which he unloaded in front of the entrance.
Blick was able to view part of the files and reported the latest findings in the data affair in a program on Blick TV at noon.
That should have been discussed today in the Zurich cantonal council and SP government councilor Jacqueline Fehr (59) should have provided information. SVP councilor Martin Prettyr (53) had asked for more precise answers to questions in the context of the affair in an emergency interpellation.
Debate postponed to January
But nothing came of that. “The government is not ready yet,” said cantonal council president Esther Guyer (71, Greens) at the start of the meeting. It was apparently not possible for the judiciary to answer the eleven questions in such a short period of time. The government council therefore requested that the company be terminated.
A motion by party independent Hans-Peter Amrein (64) to keep this on the agenda was rejected by parliament by 123 votes to 24. With that, the deal will be discussed on January 9, 2023.
Scrapped when removed
This again delays the creation of transparency in the data scandal. The Zurich Ministry of Justice is said to have been careless in throwing away computers for years. Hard disks containing unencrypted, highly sensitive data ended up in the Zurich milieu and in the hands of Beizer Gisler.
It all happened before Fehr’s reign. However, she is accused of knowing about the data breach and not making it public. She had known about the matter since 2020 and launched an administrative investigation – but she never informed the public of her own accord. The company audit committee of the canton council also did not know about the extent of the affair and therefore criticized Fehr. She has now launched an investigation.
The establishment of a parliamentary committee of inquiry (PUK) is also under discussion.