Verdict in Verbier VS Illegal Chalet Affair Reached
Published: Thursday, Oct 26th 2023, 12:10
Updated At: Thursday, Oct 26th 2023, 20:32
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The former mayor and former clerk of Bagnes VS have been convicted of forgery. In 2016, they dismissed an employee who is considered a whistleblower in connection with the illegal chalet scandal in Verbier VS.
The Wallis Cantonal Court confirmed the verdict of the first instance, but increased the penalties for the two defendants. The former mayor will be punished with a conditional fine of 50 daily rates. The former municipal clerk will receive a conditional fine of 30 daily rates, as the Cantonal Court announced on Thursday. The court did not want to provide information on the amount of the daily rates, which are linked to the wages of the convicted persons, upon request.
The municipality of Bagnes (now Val de Bagnes), which includes the village of Verbier, terminated the employment relationship with the employee on February 25, 2016. On May 4, it justified the dismissal with an internal reorganization of the administration.
The Cantonal Court convicted the two officials of forgery and forgery in office. The Cantonal Court was thus stricter than the District Court, which had only found one of the two offenses to be proven.
The content of the documents is misleading.
In its ruling, the Cantonal Court holds the view that both the termination letter and the letter of justification for the termination each constituted a document and that their content was misleading.
The Canton Court found that the municipal council had already passed the resolution to dismiss the employee in November 2015. This misleading statement was intended to prevent the dismissal from being associated with a letter from the employee in which he threatened to report several cases of building code violations.
In the first instance, the District Court of Entremont sentenced the former president to a conditional fine of 40 daily rates of 95 Swiss francs and the municipal clerk to a conditional fine of 30 daily rates of 230 Swiss francs, both with two years probation.
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