Word: switzerland
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...their borders to some of the richest. And many powerful Russian tycoons must think twice before boarding an outbound flight lest they share the fate of Pavel Borodin, the erstwhile Kremlin property manager and multimillionaire who was arrested last month in New York on an extradition request from Switzerland alleging involvement in money laundering...
...most Europeans, Switzerland is a conservative place of bank secrecy, chocolates and luxury watches. Now another product, cannabis, is on its way to becoming as quintessentially Swiss as the multifunction penknife. Berhard Machler is one man who appreciates the new trend in diversification. Machler is a manager and founding member of the Enetbrugg cooperative, a business north of Zurich that employs 200 people and racked up revenues of $5.5 million in 1999 by growing pot and selling it to the country's burgeoning network of legal hemp shops. The cooperative's revenues were lower last year, in part because...
...bust--and Machler's reaction to it--highlights the legal ambiguity of Switzerland's cannabis economy. Technically, growing or selling the plant is legal unless it's to be used as a hallucinogen. Proving that seized marijuana was intended for that purpose is a job for the police and the courts. "If you said you were selling it to treat epilepsy, the police would have to follow buyers home to see what they did with it," says Thomas Zeltner, head of the Federal Office of Public Health...
...marijuana business has, well, mushroomed as a result. Twenty hemp shops were in business across Switzerland in 1997, selling marijuana as "smell bags" and "dried flowers." Today there are as many as 300. Official figures show 600 acres of fields producing marijuana for some 600,000 occasional-to-regular consumers. "A lot of shops are making a lot of money because the margins are very high," says Francois Reusser, president of the Swiss Hemp Coordination, who also runs the Zurich hemp shop Chanf...
...Rich indicated he was "severely limited" in his ability to help because "his freedom of movement in countries outside Switzerland and Israel" was restricted. The memo says Israel decided to launch a "confidential initiative" with U.S. officials to "see whether the harshness of Marc Rich's situation could be relieved. In turn, it was anticipated that Rich could then play an important role in the economic development of the region, thereby helping to solidify the peace process...