(21 Jun 2024)
RESTRICTION SUMMARY:
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Geneva, Switzerland – 21 June 2024
1. Wide of people outside Geneva courthouse
2. Courthouse
3. Entrance sign
4. Defence lawyers arriving
5. Lawyers arriving
6. Courthouse sign
7. Defence lawyers arriving outside courthouse
8. SOUNDBITE (French) Robert Assael, defence lawyer for Kamal Hinduja:
“I have total belief that an acquittal should have been given. The shock will pass. We will recover our energy very fast, to go all the way, an appeal to the Federal Court even to the European Court of Human Rights.”
9. Lawyers speaking with reporters
10. SOUNDBITE (French) Robert Assael, defence lawyer for Kamal Hinduja:
“The health of our clients is very poor, they are elderly people, and I won’t keep it from you that – it’s what I wanted to tell the court today – that my client is in hospital in intensive care and her life is in danger, which explains why her family today stayed at her bedside.”
11. Pan of Najib Ziazi, family business adviser, leaving courtroom and declining to comment
12. Ziazi and security escort walking away
13. Wide of courthouse
STORYLINE:
A Swiss criminal court on Friday sentenced 4 members of the billionaire Hinduja family with between four and four and a half years in prison for exploiting vulnerable domestic workers while also dismissing more severe charges of human trafficking.
The abuse by Indian-born tycoon Prakash Hinduja and his wife, son and daughter-in-law included seizing the passports of the workers, mostly illiterate Indians employed at their luxurious lakeside villa in Geneva.
The Hindujas also paid the workers in Indian rupees — not Swiss francs — in banks at home, which they couldn’t access.
The four were not in court in Geneva though a fifth defendant — Najib Ziazi, the family’s business manager — was in attendance. He received an 18-month suspended sentence.
Lawyers representing the defendants said they would appeal.
The court said the 4 were guilty of exploiting the workers and providing unauthorised employment, such as by giving meagre if any health benefits and paying wages that were less than one-tenth the pay for such jobs in Switzerland.
It dismissed the trafficking charges on the grounds that the staff understood what they were getting into, at least in part.
The 4 Hindujas also barred the domestic workers from leaving the villa and forcing them to work excruciatingly long hours, among other things.
Prakash Hinduja and his wife Kamal received a four-and-a-half-year sentence, while their son Ajay and his wife, Namrata, were sentenced each to four years. The trial opened June 10.
Last week, it emerged in criminal court that the family — which has roots in India — had reached an undisclosed settlement with the plaintiffs. Geneva prosecutors opened the case for alleged illegal activity including exploitation, human trafficking and violation of Swiss labor laws.
The family set up residence in Switzerland in the late 1980s, and Prakash was already convicted in 2007 on similar, if lesser charges, though prosecutors say he persisted in employing people without proper paperwork anyway.
Swiss authorities have already seized diamonds, rubies, a platinum necklace and other jewellery and assets from the family in anticipation that they could be used to pay for legal fees and possible penalties.
Prosecutors said that at times the staffers were forced to work up to 18 hours a day with little or no vacation time off. One ailing employee got stuck with a hospital bill of over 7,000 francs (dollars), and the family only agreed to pay half, the court said.
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