The Zurich Conspiracy

was afraid it would be , Josefa thought, riding the rapid transit to Küsnacht, a wealthy village on lower Lake Zurich, on the shore popularly referred to as the “Gold Coast.” How will Frau Meyer-de Rechenstein react to my indiscreet questions, questions that will necessarily evoke unpleasant memories? Her head was spinning from all the reports she’d just gone through in Paul’s database.
    Seven years ago, when Swixan collapsed like a house of cards, those matters didn’t particularly interest her. It wasn’t in her job description to engage Loyn’s guests in conversation about things that happened in the past. Quite the opposite—it was better to ignore these topics. There were many details about the Swixan affair she didn’t understand; everything was so intricate, convoluted, intertwined. Swixan AG was, as she now knew, a bewildering conglomerate that manufactured machines and vehicles, made specialized chemical products, and was even involved in real estate. She also knew that many employees had not only lost their jobs when Swixan folded but their pensions—and more. Just before the bankruptcy one company executive had encouraged the eight thousand workers to invest in Swixan stock. Many others were already receiving the maximum number of stock options month after month, unknowingly digging a grave for their retirement savings. The corporation’s executives, however, put their own pension money into private partner companies to shield themselves from creditors should Swixan go under.
    That was shortly before the top executives began selling off huge blocks of stock because they saw the catastrophe coming. They left employees, shareholders, and business partners in the dark until the very end, assuring them that there were no grounds for concern—even when the stock price dropped and then kept dropping.
    The people in charge of the corporation had been artificially inflating profits for years and kept the growing debt load concealed by a series of complicated transactions. Nobody rang any alarm bells—not the journalists, not the stock analysts, not the market experts, not the regulators—even though the balance sheets and profit and loss statements of the convoluted empire had become mystifying (the annual report concealed more than it revealed) and even though no one could really say how Swixan actually made its money. Nobody pulled the emergency brake—including the auditors, whose job it was to ask the crucial questions.
    The head of the auditing firm at the time was Henry Salzinger, now deceased. He was absent from the table in St. Moritz where Beat Thüring, Karl Westek, and Curt Van Duisen were dining. And Feller-Stähli was mixed up in the whole affair too. (Feller-Stähli, the guy Helene claimed she didn’t know, though her father, as Josefa had now read in detail, was one of the most prominent victims of the whole tragedy.) Ultimately the bubble burst, and Swixan’s top management had to put its cards on the table; whereupon the share price plummeted, and the company declared bankruptcy.
    And Peter Meyer’s life’s work collapsed along with Swixan AG. Helene’s father had a lucrative company that made precision instruments; he’d sold it to Swixan a few years earlier because no one in the family wanted to take it over. Meyer hoped his firm would have a bright future in the bosom of a financially powerful corporation like Swixan. And they sweetened the deal by offering Meyer a seat on the administrative board, where everybody who was anybody in Zurich’s world of finance already sat.
    In spite of many “irregularities” in the run-up to the bankruptcy, the company’s managers—CEO Thüring and CFO Westek among them—got away with token fines—thanks to their crackerjack lawyer Feller-Stähli and their highly selective memories on the stand (“I don’t remember”). The auditors, including Salzinger, just washed their hands in innocence.
    How different for Peter Meyer! According to the archive Josefa looked at in Paul’s office, he spent much of his personal fortune trying to help long-time employees from his former company get through the emergency. At least he had some sense of responsibility. One of the consequences: Eleven months after the disaster Meyer—without leaving a suicide note—shot himself in the mouth. With his own hunting rifle.
    Josefa arrived at the Meyers’ by five o’clock. There was little light left by this hour so she didn’t fully appreciate