DEVIL'S ADVOCATE (1/5) The former Fedpol investigator has set herself a new mission: to restore the damaged image of traders in natural resources and encourage the Swiss to vote no to the initiative "for responsible multinationals"

RICHARD ÉTIENNE @RiEtienne

In his office, the walls are still largely blank. There are a few portraits of her in a corner, in the company of Bill Clinton, with the director of the FBI or the “boss” of the San Francisco police. On the wall that her interlocutors see during the teleworking sessions, she has installed a painting by a Geneva photographer, Marc Ninghetto, on which we can see a woman contemplating the sea and three big words: “Never give up”. When Florence Schurch is offered to be part of this series of portraits called "Devil's Advocates", to deal with the trading of raw materials that we love to hate, she responds by immediately proposing another series, on the little-known initiatives of traders in the Better Cotton Initiative, which promotes better standards in cotton farming; or on the environmentally friendly technologies that are emerging in the maritime industry, such as sailing cargo ships or air bubbles increasing the fluidity of hulls on the water.

Since February, the 46-year-old Genevan has headed the Swiss Trading and Shipping Association (STSA), the umbrella organization for merchants and maritime companies in Switzerland, a sector whose reputation is regularly tarnished by cases of corruption or human rights violations. "There are no doubt like everywhere black sheep, but the overwhelming majority of traders do a wonderful job, which allows everyone to drink coffee in the morning," she sweeps. Lobbying will have to be used to meet what Florence Schurch considers to be her “biggest challenge” in her new role: “Convincing the Swiss to vote no on the initiative” for responsible multinationals “, in November.”

The Secretary General cites the cases of cocoa and coffee, sectors in which traders collaborate with hundreds of small producers. “The reversal of the burden of proof proposed by the initiators goes too far. If the initiative is accepted, and if an NGO takes a Swiss SME to court because it suspects one of its many subcontractors, subsidiaries or suppliers of violating international rules on child labour, the SME would be presumed guilty and it would be up to her to prove that this is not the case. Switzerland would have the strictest rules in the world. Rather than encouraging companies to leave the country, shouldn't we support them?

Nearly half of the cocoa and a third of the world's coffee are traded in Switzerland, according to the Confederation. In principle, SMEs are not affected by the initiative, unless they are in a sector at risk. Like raw materials.

Florence Schurch took office in a difficult context: half of the staff of the STSA jumped ship with the resignation of her predecessor; the giant MSC withdrew from its members; a pandemic delays his plans; and its budget is “lower than that of an NGO like Public Eye”.

“I would like to make the Swiss as proud of their traders as of their chocolates,” says the secretary general, using the words of its president, the boss of the ECOM group, Ramon Esteve. “I would like to make the sector known, especially in German-speaking Switzerland.” To begin with, the manager multiplies the meetings with its members (190 in all), among which are some heavyweights, such as Vitol, BNP Paribas or Cargill, but above all SMEs.

This mother of an 8-year-old child who grew up in Anières, studied at the Bois-Caran cycle and then at Calvin College, was first attracted by the police. During a sabbatical year in South America, the young graduate in political science at the University of Geneva learns that she has been selected for an internship in Bern within the federal police, a first job that will occupy her for a dozen years. in Switzerland, the United States and Germany. The special agent targets extremist networks in Switzerland and organized crime from Russia. "Loans from the IMF and the World Bank to Boris Yeltsin's government had been diverted and passed through Switzerland," she recalls.

Six months after 9/11, she landed in Washington, where she was the first woman to be appointed as a police attaché posted abroad. The investigator is concentrating her efforts on terrorist financing networks and the assets of Saddam Hussein, while the Bush administration suspects Switzerland of being a hub. The range of investigations is wide, from the interrogation of a jeweler in Miami selling stolen Swiss watches to anthrax attacks. The diplomat also organized visits by Swiss delegations to the United States before going into exile in Berlin in 2008, where she tracked down the networks of burglars who had raged in Switzerland. "We were looking for fences, we wanted to dismantle networks."

Back home in 2009, where she was hired by the canton of Geneva to defend her interests in Bern. "The Council of State was surprised to receive a bill of 300 million francs in the context of intercantonal equalizations, it charged us, my colleague Sacra Tomisawa and me, to set up a lobbying office." The attaché to federal questions, member of the PLR, then discovers the world of trading, in full swing at the end of the lake.

"Florence is a sacred woman of action", according to its former head Anna-Karina Kolb, director of the European, regional and federal affairs department of the State of Geneva. “A field agent who loves and knows how to take on difficult missions by focusing on new approaches. To long reflections, she prefers to go for it. His impulse capacity can sometimes upset some people. Take on a difficult subject for which you have to establish a strategy and communicate in a tight time frame? I can see her there."

She is efficient, professional, exasperating, pugnacious, well introduced, she is not afraid, she puts people at ease, they say of her. “A right-wing feminist in a macho milieu, she knows where she is going. She knows Geneva politics well, she has the right networks in Bern,” said someone close to her. Will these assets be able to weigh against the initiative for responsible multinationals? Answer this fall.

Tomorrow: Guillaume de Candolle, the lawyer who defended one of the Saint-Jean attackers, as well as a pedophile holiday camp monitor

THE OVERWHELMING MAJORITY OF TRADERS DO A GREAT JOB