The investigation spanned seven years and was headed by a string of different prosecutors, but after a well-publicized raid of the Hell’s Angels clubhouse in Zurich, property seizures and more than two dozen wiretaps, Swiss federal prosecutors could not prove the Hell’s Angels motorcycle club is a crime syndicate.

VALENTIN LANDMANN: “There was not real, substantial suspicion for criminal organization so they came up with a lot of garbage.”

Valentin Landmann is the Hell’s Angels’ attorney in Zurich, and has known many of members of the club for some 30 years. He says the club represents a certain biker lifestyle—tattooed, leather-clad and rough—and that biker persona may have influenced why prosecutors pursued the club aggressively.
 
LANDMANN: “Maybe they saw reports from other states where Hell’s Angels were considered an outlaw biker gang and maybe they wanted to find out. The whole procedure in Switzerland was quite a disaster. It was the first time that they used all the terrorist laws against a group of people. They were in the telephones, they made tapes—video tapes—in the flats. They made video tapes in the offices. They made a complete control.”

The crux of the prosecution’s problem was proving what qualifies as organized crime in Switzerland. 

Mark Pieth was a Swiss justice official in 1994 when the country’s organized crime law went into effect. He says the law was set up to fight foreign Mafia members moving into Switzerland and is not for domestic policing.

MARK PIETH: This conspiracy type or racketeering type of rule does something very foreign to Swiss law: It holds someone responsible for participation in a group. The group is identified by its aim alone—committing violent crimes or by enriching itself or wanting to enrich itself by serious felonies.

Pieth says proving a group has as complex a structure, secrecy and criminal intent of the Mafia is incredibly hard for prosecutors.

PIETH: We would be asking a lot if you have to prove that such a group has to be Mafia like. That’s a very, very high threshold.

Even without that high threshold Hell’s Angels’ attorney Valentin Landmann says the situation of the Hell’s Angels is different from that of the Mafia. The bikers are members of a club, and the organization is not criminal.

LANDMANN: If a criminal offense takes place it is not an offense done by the group. If a Rotary Club member in New York does something criminal—which I hope he doesn’t do—but anyway if he does you don’t consider the whole Rotary Club as a criminal organization. Same should be the case for the Hell’s Angels.

Cantonal and federal police and prosecutors declined to comment on this story. But the federal prosecutors office said in a statement last week it would pursue charges against five club members ranging from drug offenses to extortion and kidnapping.

—Tony Ganzer, World Radio Switzerland, Zurich
 

Tony Ganzer’s extended interview with Valentin Landmann following last week’s news: