Freedom could cost Jacques and Jessica Moretti 400 thousand Swiss francs, around 430 thousand euros. This is the amount of bail that the Sion General Prosecutor’s Office has requested for the owners of the Constellation in Crans-Montana, under investigation for murder, injury and negligent fire after the fire on New Year’s Eve, where 40 people died and 116 were injured.
While waiting for the Court of Guarantee to rule, also defining which precautionary measures to apply, such as the electronic bracelet, the man remains in prison, while his wife is subjected to the obligation to sign and to the ban on leaving the country, having also had to hand over her passport.
Switzerland working on compensation
Switzerland is also working to define a package of economic interventions aimed at the families of the victims, with emergency measures, help with medical expenses and then larger compensation. Various initiatives, largely already regulated by a federal law for aid to crime victims, with disbursements which, in some cases, would exceed two hundred thousand francs. Obviously excluding the insurance issue which will then have to be defined in light of the judicial outcomes. The dossier is also currently the subject of a discussion between the Italian embassy and the federal and cantonal authorities and today it was a topic of discussion between Ambassador Gian Lorenzo Cornado and the State Councilor of the Canton of Valais Stéphane Ganzer.
“There is a positive climate, excellent collaboration at a bilateral level, both with the authorities of the Canton of Valais and with the federal ones,” said the diplomat. In the meantime, the Rome prosecutor’s office is continuing its work in Italy and has opened an investigation into multiple manslaughter, negligent injury and fire. On its behalf, the Milanese prosecutor’s office today sent the lawyers assisting the families of Chiara Costanzo and Achille Barosi the notice to schedule the autopsy to establish the causes of death. Furthermore, Antonio Bana and Stefano Cassamagnaghi, lawyers for Achille’s parents, are proceeding with the formation of civil parties in the Swiss investigation. On the idea of the Italian government becoming a civil party, also involving the European Commission in the proceedings in Switzerland, today a signal arrived from Brussels. Spokesperson Arianna Podestà clarified that “the Commission can participate in national judicial proceedings only when interests or rights provided for by the European Treaties must be represented” and “under the conditions governing admission to judicial proceedings provided for by relevant national law”, without specifying whether the Commission will actually act as a civil party. And Italian attention remains high also on the developments of the Swiss investigation. Ambassador Gian Lorenzo Cornado today met Stéphane Ganzer, state councilor for security of the Canton of Valais, the equivalent of the interior minister, in Sion, receiving “assurances that the investigation will be conducted with rigor and independence”. According to the diplomat “on the part of the leaders of the Canton of Valais there is maximum collaboration with the Italian authorities and an ironclad commitment: they too expect answers because in this tragedy there are also Valais victims”.
We are therefore awaiting the order from the Valais Court in the next few hours regarding the precautionary measures for the Moretti spouses, proposed by the investigators exactly a week ago, after a lengthy interrogation that lasted almost 7 hours. They were motivated by the risk of flight, only partially accepting the requests of the lawyers of the victims’ families who also invoked the risk of evidence being tampered with. “Both the risk of tampering with evidence and the risk of escape are sufficient for the arrest of the couple in precautionary detention”, the lawyer Nina Fournier, lawyer of some victims, wrote to the prosecutor’s office, also requesting the seizure of all the couple’s assets and properties. Mikael Guerra, another lawyer for the victims, highlighted “the risk of flight is concrete and serious, even more so in light of the ban on carrying out the activity already pronounced by the Municipality on 5 January. It follows that any economic interest in Switzerland of the couple, of French nationality, has now disappeared, therefore revealing a weakening, if not an absence, of professional activity in Switzerland”. According to Guerra, “the ease of leaving the territory as French citizens, especially considering the presence of land borders, does not guarantee any control over their presence and availability”.