Swiss secrets

Disclaimer: After I exhibited at the Swiss Institute years ago, I researched Switzerland and the Swiss institute. This critique is directed towards the professional role of those mentioned (except the billionaires). Any form of attack on personal character, ad hominem or harassment is not appropriate as a response to this post.

Switzerland has been under much scrutiny since the second world war. Switzerland sold weapons to Nazis for millions during the war and stored $440m ($8b 2020) of Nazi Gold in the Swiss National Bank. This is the backdrop of what is referred to as neutrality. In reality, neutrality in 2022 turns out to be a neo-liberal concept where moral and ethics does not apply and prevents climate action, breaches human rights and centralizes wealth.

Switzerland is responsible for $13 billion in losses to tax evasion globally through its tax haven scheme. It’s so bad that a centre-right group in the EU (EPP) has asked for Switzerland to be re-evaluated as a high-risk money laundering state. With the recent Suisse secrets leak, numerous people involved in crimes such as corruption, bribery, drugs and human trafficking became known as Credit Suisse clients. The clients collectively held more than 100 billion dollars.

Going through the top 10 companies in Switzerland, you find Glencore, Roche, Cargill, Nestlé, and Novartis.

Glencore

Glencore is a swiss multinational commodity trading and mining company. With a long list of human rights breaches, tax avoidance, bribery and market manipulation, and environmental damage, it’s clear that the shadowy neo-liberal nature of the company is responsible for many reported and unreported breaches without many consequences, while its revenue in 2021 was $203.751B.

Nestlé

“Water is, of course, the most important raw material we have today in the world. It’s a question of whether we should privatize the normal water supply for the population. And there are two different opinions on the matter. The one opinion, which I think is extreme, is represented by the NGOs, who bang on about declaring water a public right. That means that as a human being you should have a right to water. That’s an extreme solution. The other view says that water is a foodstuff like any other, and like any other foodstuff it should have a market value. Personally, I believe it’s better to give a foodstuff a value so that we’re all aware it has its price, and then that one should take specific measures for the part of the population that has no access to this water, and there are many different possibilities there.”

Peter Brabeck-Letmathe, a former chairman and CEO of Nestlé

Nestlé is involved in forced labour in thai fishing industry, deforestation, anti-union activities in Colombia, attempts to privatize water and exploiting lax water laws, slavery and child labour. With a revenue of $93B in 2021, it’s clear that the list of breaches is long, and a lot is underreported due to corruption and lack of governmental oversight.

*Mars, Nestlé and Hershey pledged nearly two decades ago to stop using cocoa harvested by children. Yet much of the chocolate you buy still starts with child labour.* *Mighty Earth’s team visited multiple protected areas inside Ivory Coast and found illegal cocoa production had completely overtaken areas that had previously been covered by forests.*

Cargill

Cargill is involved in child slavery, land grabbing, deforestation, air pollution and tax evasion. It’s often referred to as the worst company in the world and had a record $165 billion in revenue in 2022.

Roche

Roche has been involved in price fixing, unethical testing of drugs on humans, false marketing, excessive pricing of life-saving breast cancer drugs and union busting. Roche’s revenue was 72 Billion Dollars in 2021.

Blocking climate action

These are just a few examples of the top 10 companies that taxes to Switzerland. The list is much longer per company, and many cases stay unreported. With Switzerland’s tax evasion of 13 Billion dollars, its lack of accountability for its companies, and its shadowy banking business, it’s evident that this neo-liberal approach actively blocks climate action. Climate action requires a large amount of capital for the transition, and the capital is often collected through taxes.

From Emissions must peak before 2025 for ‘liveable future’, UN report says:

Capping global warming at 1.5C without overshooting the mark by a wide margin will require investing about $2.3 trillion a year in the electricity sector from 2023 to 2052. If 2C is the target, that figure drops to $1.7 trillion.

In 2021, about $750 billion was spent on clean energy technologies and efficiency worldwide, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA).

Overall, investment in CO2 reduction is deeply inadequate.

Wealthy individuals are also one of the main contributors to climate change. According to Oxfam, billionaires are responsible for a million times more greenhouse gas emissions than the average person because of their investments and consumption habits.

Swiss Soft Power

Switzerland uses some of its taxes to fund culture and art. The Swiss Institute in New York recently announced its commitment to highlighting concerns around climate change. There’s an apparent cognitive dissonance between the material reality, where the funding comes from and its purpose.

With the lack of transparency, the Swiss Institute lists Pro Helvetia (swiss public funding) and LUMA foundation as their primary funding sources. They receive at least 500000 dollars from Pro Helvetia. Fonds Cantonal D’art Contemporain Genève and Stadt Zürich Kultur also support them. Another important funding source comes from the LUMA Foundation, founded by the granddaughter of industrialist Emanuel (Manno) Hoffmann, the founder of Roche. Maja Hoffmann has a 1.5% economic interest in Roche Holding, the world’s fifth-largest drugmaker. She has a net worth of 6.55 Billion dollars.

While a small part of the tax from Glencore, Nestlé, Roche, Cargill and the whole list from Suisse secrets ends up being used to fund the Swiss Institute, the institute should still be held accountable for financing their institution with money from sources that actively prevent climate action.

From With a New Director at the Helm, New York’s Swiss Institute Seeks to Highlight Concerns Around Climate Change

In particular, Hessler explained that the concept of “planetarity,” coined by Indian scholar Gayatri Spivak, has been useful to think about how she will address questions of ecology and social justice in her future curatorial work at the organization. “[Spivak’s idea conceives] the planet as something that connects us all. It’s a concept that emphasizes inequities…it allows us to see things in connection but without leveling out differences,” she said.

One of the main issues with contemporary art is that it is closely tied to environmental damage and human rights breaches through its funding. Without accountability for its financing and addressing its funding sources, the Swiss Institute cannot make much of a difference when it comes to climate change or human rights. Art becomes neo-liberal when you do not address the institution’s foundation through exhibitions, transparency reports, public discussion and confronting state officials.

Neo-liberal companies and states do not have a problem funding contemporary art as long as the companies’ revenue and the state’s tax are not threatened. This is why the Swiss Institute can create socially conscious exhibitions while neo-liberal capitalists keep destroying this planet. It turns contemporary art into entertainment with little to no political impact.