The Chinese embassy and consulate in Geneva employed up to 100 staff in the 1950s and 1960s. In short, spying on foreigners in Switzerland was not illegal. The Office of the Attorney General and the Federal Police were only able to take action against persons and organisations that endangered the internal and external security of Switzerland. The fact that the mandate of Swiss counterintelligence was very narrowly defined was also an advantage. Thousands of diplomats travelled annually to attend meetings at the United Nations and other international organisations in Geneva – an ideal setting for spying on delegations and representatives from all over the world. But Bern, located in the heart of Europe, was more attractive than Amsterdam or Oslo could hope to be for planning secret meetings.Īs a neutral country seeking to make a name for itself in conflict mediation, Switzerland maintained diplomatic relations with as many countries as possible. How did Switzerland become a control centre for Chinese espionage? Like The Netherlands and countries in Scandinavia, Switzerland was quick to establish diplomatic relations with the People's Republic of China. Chinese secret agents set up dozens of international spy networks in the 1950s and 1960s – all of them from their base in Switzerland. Yet the government consistently denied the claims: as late as 1965, the public prosecutor's office stated that the "fairy tale" about a Chinese spy school in Switzerland had most likely been inspired by the James Bond film Goldfinger.įiles from the Federal Archives, however, paint a different picture. Headlines blared “Bern: the spy centre of Red China in Europe" and "Chinese diplomats train in Switzerland". Half a century ago, the world’s newspapers had choice words for the scandal enveloping the Alpine nation.
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