His conviction by the Swiss courts to three years in prison made headlines. On appeal, the Franco-Israeli billionaire Beny Steinmetz was found guilty in April 2023 of bribery of public officials in the case of the Guinean mines of the Simandou Mountains. He is now requesting that his conviction be overturned and a new trial.
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Although Beny Steinmetz was sentenced to 18 months in prison, his sentence was already suspended pending a decision by the Swiss Federal Court, the country’s highest judicial authority, which he immediately appealed to after his conviction.
This time, his defense is going further and demanding a new trial, arguing that one of the prosecutors in charge of the case had violated criminal procedure.
” The prosecutor crossed the line of legality »
Based on Israeli investigations, the billionaire’s lawyers claim that the Swiss prosecutor illegally granted immunity to a witness in exchange for his testimony against Beny Steinmetz. His defense therefore believes that the businessman did not receive a fair trial.
” Due to the sum of evidence indicating an inadequate investigation, we were almost certain that the prosecutor had crossed the line of legality. Thanks to these documents, it is now possible to prove this. ” said Daniel Kinzer, Beny Steinmetz’s lawyer, in the statement.
This is a new twist in a decade-old case concerning the allocation of mining rights in southeastern Guinea, the largest unexploited iron ore deposit on the planet. A lengthy international investigation had established that the rights granted to the businessman’s group had been in exchange for large bribes paid to senior Guinean dignitaries.
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