The plot is worthy of a spy novel. According to a joint investigation conducted by the investigative unit of the media NK News (United States), Der Spiegel (Germany) and Tamedia (Switzerland), a Canadian citizen, an expert on North Korea, has been languishing for six months in Swiss prisons. He is suspected of having provided strategic information to China on North Korean diplomats. The former employee of a UN agency, converted into an environmental advisor, was arrested in mid-March in Geneva, according to revelations from these media.
Six months of pre-trial detention in a Swiss prison
A surprisingly strict procedure, according to the Swiss press. “It is rare for the Swiss authorities to take measures on suspicion of espionage,” However, the German-language Swiss daily newspaper raises View. However, he assures, criminal proceedings would indeed have been launched in March 2023 against the Canadian, for having provided “military, economic and political information to a foreign power or organization”, according to documents from the Swiss Federal Criminal Court. consulted by NK News. The arrest, finally carried out a year later on March 14, 2024, is not officially commented on by Switzerland. But it is confirmed to the media by the Canadian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. No comment has been made by the suspect’s lawyer or family.
“But what could have led him there?” This is what the Swiss daily newspaper asks: Tages-Anzeiger. From mid-March, his relatives became worried: “Craig B”, as NK News nicknamed him, no longer responded to his messages. “The North Korean expert and former UN official regularly traveled to China for his work as an environmental consultant, and some feared that Beijing had detained him,” says the media’s investigative unit. It was only six months later that the general public discovered the fate of the Canadian, who had been held in pre-trial detention in Swiss jails for several months pending the conclusion of an investigation by the Swiss attorney general’s office. Although rare, the Swiss procedure was not rushed. The arrest was reportedly prompted by Swiss intelligence investigations in 2021.
Special relations with North Korean diplomats
“It all started with an operation carried out by the Swiss counter-espionage services” against China in 2021, says the Tages-Anzeiger. The latter are then alarmed by the meetings, in a Geneva restaurant, between a Chinese diplomat, also secretly employed by the secret services, and a Canadian man of about fifty years old. According to the Swiss Confederation Intelligence Service (SRC), the diplomat is said to have given the man an envelope of money in exchange for information on North Korean diplomatic representatives stationed in Switzerland.
He is said to have formed these ties “while working for a UN organization that supports developing countries. He had been the contact person for the organization’s activities in North Korea,” where he had visited for several years before the Covid-19 pandemic, the daily points out. View. “At the end of February, he even took care of booking a hotel and a minibus with driver for a North Korean delegation in Nairobi,” the source further explained. Spiegel.
So why such a strong measure in a country that usually calmly pushes spies out? “The counter-espionage campaign underlines an effort by Switzerland to eradicate Chinese espionage operations in Geneva, which is home to several UN organizations,” judges the Swiss media NK News.
For the Spiegelthe spotlight on the case could even damage diplomatic relations between longtime allies China and North Korea. If convicted of collecting military, economic and political intelligence for a foreign government, Craig B. faces three years in prison.