Dino Bellasi

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Person.png Dino BellasiRdf-entity.pngRdf-icon.png
(customs official, accountant, spook, officer)
Dino Bellasi.png
Born1960
Basel, Switzerland
NationalitySwiss
Exposed • Switzerland/Deep state
• P26
InterestsCarla del Ponte
Swiss spook and officer who was exposed as organizing secret armed group - several years after the Swiss stay behind allegedly was dissolved.

Dino Bellasi is a former Swiss customs officer and intelligence officer.

In 1998, Dino Bellasi, a former accountant for the Swiss secret service[Which?], was found to have pocketed around 8.9 million francs through false declarations. After his arrest, he stated that most of the money had been used to purchase weapons for a new super-secret service that would not be under the government's responsibility, and that he had acted on the orders of his highest boss within the regular Swiss secret service. This happened several years after the Swiss stay behind allegedly was dissolved.[1][2]

Background

Dino Bellasi grew up in Basel and completed training as a customs officer and as a militia officer in the 97th Fusilier Battalion. He then became a staff secretary with the rank of captain.

Official narrative

A large arms cache was found in a storage rented by Bellasi (not pictured)

From 1988 he worked for the Swiss secret service, where he organized and billed training courses. In this position, he managed to embezzle a total of 8.9 million Swiss francs and used it to finance a lavish lifestyle, a large weapons collection and setting up false companies[3]. Even after he left the service in 1998, Bellasi was still able to withdraw funds. The incident was discovered when troop accounting was audited in August 1999 after Bellasi's successor became suspicious. On August 12, 1999, Carla del Ponte from the Swiss Federal Prosecutor's Office intervened. Dino Bellasi and his (later exonerated) wife were arrested at Zurich Airport the following day.[4]

Dino Bellasi initially blamed his superiors, where the head of the secret service, Peter Regli, had commissioned him to finance a "shadow intelligence service" independent of the government. On August 22, 1999, Federal Councilor Adolf Ogi described the dimensions of the affair "with the keywords arms depot, arms trade, organized crime and secret army"[4] The chief of the secret service resigned "voluntarily" so as not to hinder the judicial investigation.

In 1997, it was exposed that a number of unknown sports enthusiasts had conducted exercises with these deadly weapons high in the mountains at a a military facility near Andermatt[1]. Bellasi maintain contacts with organized crime and notorious figures from the international arms trade.[5]

At the end of August, after intense interrogation, Bellasi retracted his accusations, and said it was purely his own doing.

Carla del Ponte, who was about to leave Switzerland to take over the post of Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda.[6] She announced that there was no question of a new secret network in Switzerland, that the leadership of the Swiss secret service was blameless, and that the Bellasi case was purely and simply a criminal affair. Bellasi was charged with fraud. He was sentenced to six years in prison for forgery of documents, false accusations and other crimes and was released early in August 2003 after four years.[7]


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