Act of conscience forces guard to flee Switzerland

By Mochtar Buchori

JAKARTA (JP): Christophe Meili, 29, has a wife and two children. He was a business student, and worked nights as a security guard. A turn of events forced him to give up his humble job, his studies, and flee the country. He is now living in a foreign country, looking for protection and help. He has to endure all these discomforts, because he listened to his conscience, and did something others called a noble, and even a heroic deed, but which his office considered a breach of regulations.

Who is Christophe Meili, and what has he done?

He used to work for the Union Bank of Switzerland (UBS). He was fired from his job, because he saved some "very old documents and books" from being destroyed, and handed them over to people who, according to his conscience, have the right to know the contents, the Hebrew Congregation of Zurich.

Is he a Jew? No, he is, in his own words, "a Bible-reading Christian who regards Jews as my brothers". Why did he take this step? Because he suspected the documents and books which should be shredded might be related to investigations into assets held by depositors who died in Nazi death camps. He knows there is a law which forbids the destruction of documents that might be related to World War II atrocities. UBS, of course, insists this is not the case. The problem is that on two of those books was written "1945 through to 1965".

Christophe Meili decided to flee to the United States after he received death threats, and someone threatened to kidnap his children, saying "he could pay the ransom with money from the Jews". He felt he no longer had any future in Switzerland. The only way to save his life and his family was to leave the country, and try to find a safer place to live. His choice was the United States.

It would be very interesting if we knew the mental conflict that Meili experienced when considering the options open to him. Should he have followed the order blindly, and destroyed the documents and books? Or should he have informed those, who according to his conscience, have the moral right to know the contents? What would have been the consequences of each choice? There is no information on which to answer these questions. But on the basis of common sense, it is safe to assume that he did experience a "turbulent" mental conflict.

Meili was caught between two norms or rules, that is the bank's security rules, and the country's law forbidding the destruction of material related to World War II investigations. He must have known immediately that the country's law ranks higher than the bank's security law and that violating the country's law is a crime. But he must also have been aware that his violation of the bank's rules would be considered a "crime" by the bank, and that this "undisciplined act" would not go unpunished.

But perhaps what he did not realize was that the consequences of his action would not stop there. He did not realize that he would be threatened by certain parties and that his children would also be at risk. Perhaps he also did not realize that he would be interrogated, and the police would not protect him. Watching his expression when he testified before the U.S. Senate, it was obvious Meili was not mentally prepared to face all the consequences.

One of the U.S. Senators who was present during his testimony later said: "He should be hailed as a hero in Switzerland. Officials at UBS should be ashamed of the way he has been treated."

But there is another puzzling aspect to this story. It is the fact that this whole affair happened in Switzerland, a country known for its maturity in democracy and its reliability and integrity in business deals. If it happened in a country known for its unrest such as in Latin America, Eastern Europe, Africa, or Asia, people would not be so surprised.

But it happened in a country which has gained trust from the whole world and from all kind of people, from austere and hardworking tycoons to rich scums and scoundrels. Can business ethics which have developed in so many generations of Swiss banks not function as a guide in this particular case?

In the face of the existing realities, it is of course wrong to ask this. The case between UBS and Christophe Meili is not a business matter. In the eyes of the UBS management, it is just a simple case of a minor official violating a security regulation. This case does not involve ethics or morality. It was only after the case became a major international scandal that people at the UBS realized how grossly they had underestimated the whole affair.

But the core issue in this case is greed. According to a report written by Stuart Eizenstadt and William Slaney, both of the U.S. State Department, the Swiss used their neutrality during World War II to "advance their economic self-interest..., even after it became apparent that the Allies would win over the Axis... The Swiss repeatedly hid behind legalistic arguments on this issue when clearly there were moral questions involved".

Greed is a moral defect. No amount of legalism can hide or cure it. It also has nothing to do with democracy. It can happen -- and it did happen -- in the most mature democracies. Democracy makes detection of greed possible. But it can neither prevent it nor cure it.

Democracy without morality will lead us nowhere. Morality without democracy will lead to a perilous existence.