Space travel entrepreneur must answer to Freiburg court
Published: Tuesday, Sep 24th 2024, 09:50
Retour au fil d'actualité
The founder of the space travel company Swiss Space Systems, Pascal Jaussi, must stand trial for misleading the administration of justice. The Fribourg public prosecutor's office accuses him of orchestrating an arson attack against him in August 2016.
It brought charges before the criminal court of the Broye district, as it announced on Tuesday. The accused had maintained throughout the investigation that he had been the victim of an attack.
According to the public prosecutor's office, he also denies the other crimes he is accused of. He is also charged with intentional arson, obtaining a false certificate, fraud, embezzlement and forgery.
At the end of August 2016, he was found in a forest near Aumont FR with burns to his face, chest and neck. He had claimed that strangers had forced him to drive his own car into a forest.
There, he and the car were doused with petrol and set on fire. Jaussi spent a week and a half in hospital. He gave interviews about the incident to the media in French-speaking Switzerland. He linked the attack to his work as a space travel entrepreneur.
Multi-year investigation
The company Swiss Space Systems wanted to offer parabolic flights to experience weightlessness. It also wanted to launch mini satellites into orbit with a shuttle. However, the start-up went bankrupt before the first flights could take place.
In the course of the investigation, which lasted several years, criminal acts in the founding and administration of the company were also uncovered, the Fribourg public prosecutor's office announced on Tuesday. The long duration of the investigation was explained by the high complexity of the case. Requests for legal assistance were made in eight countries and thousands of transactions in bank accounts were analyzed.
©Keystone/SDA
French 
English 
German 
Spanish 
Arabic