https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/swiss-spy-chief-exits-after-reports-row-over-cia-linked-firm-2021-05-12/

 
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May 12, 20214:08 PM UTC

EuropeSwiss spy chief exits after reports of row over CIA-linked firm

Reuters

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2 minute read

Switzerland's spy chief will leave his post, the government said on
Wednesday, after a newspaper reported he had fallen out with the
defence minister over his handling of a scandal involving a
cryptography firm linked to the CIA.

Jean-Philippe Gaudin, elevated in 2018 to head Switzerland's NDB
intelligence service under then-Defence Minister Guy Parmelin, will
be replaced by Juerg Buehler on an interim basis, the government said
in a statement.

The Tages-Anzeiger paper reported that tensions developed between
Gaudin and current Defence Minister Viola Amherd in part because he
waited too long to inform her about the affair involving Crypto AG.

For decades, the Swiss company sold encryption devices while being
secretly owned by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency and Germany's
intelligence service, which could freely read what it encrypted. (
https://reut.rs/3eEZwNh)

The NDB gave no reason for Gaudin's departure, saying only that he
would take up a "new challenge" in the private sector.

A spokesman for the intelligence service did not immediately comment
on the newspaper report. Gaudin could not be reached for comment.

Reports about CIA involvement in Crypto have circulated in
Switzerland for years, in particular after the arrest in the 1990s of
one of the company's salesmen in Iran, which accused him of leaking
encryption codes to its Western rivals.

But new details emerged in early 2020 when Swiss authorities said
they were investigating reports that the CIA and the German BND spy
service had used Crypto's encryption technology to crack other
nations' top-secret messages, stirring an outcry in officially
neutral Switzerland.

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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