JuristGate: Bad faith, fraud, FINMA judgment against Parreaux Thiebaud & Partners, Justicia SA, Justiva SA, Atlas Capital SA, finding a lawyer in Switzerland
Late 2022, I got an unexpected phone call. It was the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS). After prevailing over IBM Red Hat in the WeMakeFedora.org harassment case, the CAS was the last place I would expect somebody to start a new crusade. Then again, the CAS president, John Coates and I are both Australians with a background in rowing. It is more than 10 years since I last dabbled in the topic of sports management.
Not quite. I was surprised to find that Coates and I now share the same address, the Swiss domicile of the Software Freedom Institute being in the same complex as the court that rules on doping and other serious controversies in sport.
The Swiss postman had erroneously gifted them a new dispute from the Swiss Intellectual Property Office in Bern, the place where Einstein used to work, and the court quickly realized it was not for them.
The postman hasn't made the same mistake again but the connection to doping and other forms of cheating has reared its head in the ugliest manner. We'll get to that.
Reminiscent of the harassment from IBM Red Hat, Software in the Public Interest, Inc (SPI) is now asking a Swiss judge to rule that I am not a real developer.
Some basic facts about the case:
- Debian records show I have been contributing since at least 1998, that is more than 25 years.
- In the year I graduated from University of Melbourne, the school was ranked 17 in the world.
- The judge has been given a payment of CHF 18,500 by lawyers at Walder Wyss acting for SPI.
- Copyright law suggests that our rights as a developer begin immediately upon creation of software.
Surely, after 25 years of collaboration, my copyright interest as a Debian Developer would be beyond question? Nonetheless, Switzerland is a country known for a lot of racism and they may be hoping to get some corrupt judge who will be unable to see my work and make a verdict based on my anglophone accent.
Nobody who has such a clear copyright interest can be accused of acting in bad faith in the registration of domains or trademarks. This was already established in the Scientology/Scientologie case.
When the Software Freedom Institute was established, it was clear that legal costs can be unpredictable. Therefore, I purchased a number of insurance and legal services to ensure smooth running of the corporation. I was surprised to find the opposite: my purchase of a legal insurance membership from Parreaux, Thiébaud & Partners in Geneva has revealed multiple layers of corruption and incompetence in the Swiss legal system.
The error of the Swiss postman who delivered my registered letter to John Coates is rather tame in comparison to how the Swiss legal profession and FINMA fails to regulate themselves and protect the public.
Bad faith in review
In my earlier blog about Debian / SPI evading liability to the families of the dead, I asked the question What is the difference between bad faith and fraud?.
Fraud tends to be easier to classify. In the current allegations against Donald Trump, it has been alleged that he told his bankers that his penthouse was three times bigger than it really is. Bad faith tends to concern more mischievous acts of deception.
To give an example, in the United States, prices displayed in shops and restaurants never include the taxes. The taxes will always be added to your bill at the point of sale. In Europe and Australia, we have the opposite system, the prices we see in a shop or restaurant always include taxes.
Switzerland follows the European convention, except for one type of service: lawyers. The lawyers have given themselves an exemption from the rule. For people who only interact with a lawyer once or twice in the lifetime, they may ask a lawyer for a fixed price and be surprised to see taxes are added on top of the price the lawyer quoted. The Swiss law authorizes lawyers to omit taxes when they quote for a service so they are not committing any crime. But given the likelihood that consumers will be taken by surprise, can we call this system an example of bad faith?
If the lawyers themselves are acting in bad faith every time they create a bill for a client, how can they accuse an unpaid volunteer of bad faith? In 25 years, nobody at SPI or Debian has paid for the time I've contributed to development, mentoring or supporting activities and events.
Yet the Swiss lesson in bad faith doesn't finish there.
Allegations of bad faith after 2023 bank runs
In the first half of the year, we saw a number of banks brought down by bank runs.
It is interesting to compare them:
| Bank | Date of death | Residual payment to shareholders |
|---|---|---|
| Silicon Valley Bank UK | 10 March 2023 | £1.00 |
| Credit Suisse | 19 March 2023 | CHF 3 billion |
Fundamentally, the Credit Suisse deal failed to pay the bondholders before giving that CHF 3 billion to shareholders. While it is conventional to pay shareholders last, the contract for these bonds didn't explicitly require regulators to follow the convention. Nonetheless, legal experts have challenged the arrangement, arguing that it amounts to bad faith.
What we see here is that some very sophisticated investors bought these AT1 bonds and they got a surprise when their money was given to shareholders, just as individual consumers may be surprised when they use a Swiss lawyer and receive a bill that is inflated by taxes.
If Switzerland's largest companies can behave like this, how can any other company in Swtizerland be accused of bad faith?
Multitasking at FINMA
Two weeks after forcing Switzerland's two largest companies into a merger, I received an email from Mathieu Elias Parreaux of Justicia SA telling me that FINMA had made a secret judgment shutting down his business. He sent me the email on 14 April 2023.
In the email, he told me that he had set up a new company, Justiva SA and asking me to pay for another year of legal protection in advance.
What he didn't mention is that ten days prior to this, on 4 April 2023, FINMA had made a ruling personally disqualifying Monsieur Parreaux from operating an insurance business.
At the time, I was not aware of either the ruling against Parreaux's company nor the ruling against Parreaux personally.
As Parreaux told me there had been a finding against his company, I asked for a copy of the judgment. He refused to send it to me. I couldn't find it anywhere else either.
Parreaux didn't mention that he had been personally disqualified.
Nonetheless, it begs the question: if a person has done something so bad that they are disqualified from engaging in insurance transactions, how can they still be qualified to work in a profession that requires a high degree of trust, such as lawyering?
FINMA and the Swiss authorities went to great lengths to tell everybody how the Credit Suisse depositors would be fully protected. But the news given to customers of Parreaux, Thiébaud & Partners / Justicia SA was the opposite, customers would not get any money back at all. This was the complete opposite of the Credit Suisse deal and it was all done very quietly.
Given that customers of Parreaux, Thiébaud & Partners / Justicia SA got nothing, how can anybody now say the Swiss financial center is safe? Could the reassurances of safety themselves be an example of bad faith behavior?
Think about it for a moment: if FINMA couldn't regulate a garden variety insurance racket operating in broad daylight, how can they be relied upon to regulate the hideously complex entity that has been created from the merger of Switzerland's two biggest banks?
Swiss corporate records show that the director of Parreaux's new business Justiva SA is his business partner François Thiébaud. Why did FINMA only disqualify one of these Swiss lawyers and not both of them?
Miscarriage of justice: compromising legal disputes that are in progress
People don't normally seek help from a lawyer unless they have a serious problem. The problems that do require legal intervention may involve loss of employment, eviction, divorce or disputes over inheritance. All of these matters have both a financial and emotional impact on the parties. This is the worst possible time to find out that your lawyer or legal insurer has been untrustworthy or is going out of business.
In the case of the harassment I've experienced from Debian / SPI, it is even worse: the law firm tasked with liquidating the assets of Parreaux, Thiébaud & Partners / Justicia SA is Walder Wyss SA, the very same law firm that is representing Debian / SPI in a civil procedure.
Therefore, the lawyer for the opposite party is gaining access to all the records from a legal protection firm I had engaged myself.
This is where we go back to the beginning of the blog, the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) and the comparison to doping.
When the other party suddenly gets all this data, it leaves me with no confidence in the future of the procedure.
So I simply wrote to the judge, sending him a copy of the emails from Mathieu Parreaux and I told him that as a consequence of this behavior, I have no confidence in Swiss lawyers or the Swiss legal system.
If it looks like insurance, if it sounds like insurance and if it smells like insurance, is it insurance?
Parreaux Thiebaud & Partners / Justicia SA / Justiva SA promote themselves as a "membership" based legal service for small businesses and individuals who don't need a full-time in-house lawyer.
Despite claiming that their structure as a law office is better than a legal insurance company, they have published various papers comparing their fixed annual fees to other providers of legal insurance services.
Swiss racism and stealing from foreigners / Frontaliers
The Swiss lawyers have identified foreigners as a primary target for their business. They have published brochures and web pages claiming that they are there to help the frontaliers while in fact they have taken money and given nothing in return.
Frontaliers are the workers who live in France and drive across the border every day to work a few hours in Geneva before going back across the border to their home. Frontaliers are subject to systematic racial discrimination based on factors such as where they live and where they were born. Such factors are irrelavant to their ability to perform their jobs.
Approximately fifty percent of workers in Geneva are Frontaliers. You can find the Frontaliers working in all the major institutions, including the United Nations, CERN, EPFL, the Red Cross headquarters and even the Court of Arbitration for Sport.
Therefore, it is particularly sinister that a Swiss lawyers' conspiracy has targeted these people for exploitation, given them false hope and then left them high and dry.
Example of Parreaux Thiebaud & Partners / Justicia SA / Justiva SA brochure targetting Frontaliers.
Swiss people regularly display racist posters in Geneva attacking the frontaliers, here is an example:
FINMA obfuscated names and dates
Here are some key dates in the evolution of the fraud:
2017: Mathieu Parreaux forms the business Parreaux Thiebaud & Partners.
2018-01-01: the business entity Parreaux, Thiébaud SNC begins trading. It appears belatedly in the gazette on 22.02.2018. One of the key points to note in this publication is that the business intends to sell legal and insurance services both in Switzerland and abroad. To sell legal and insurance services abroad, they would need to be registered at the bar and to have authorisation to sell insurance in each jurisdiction. They don't have either of those things in Switzerland, let alone in the EU.
2018-05-21: Clémence Lamirand, journalist at Agence économique et financière (AGEFI), a Swiss financial news service, publishes an article praising the new business. Lamirand describes the partnership formed when Mathieu Parreaux joined forces with François Thiébaud's previous business from Lausanne. The article mentions 10 jurists are employed in the firm, although the journalist didn't verify how many of these people are registered at the bar.
2018-07-19: Edouard Bolleter at PME Magazine (PME is a French acronym for Small and Medium Business, like SME in English) publishes an article praising the new law firm. The journalist appears to be asleep at the wheel: he notes that the service is unlimited but doesn't examine whether it is viable.
2018-09: Mathieu Elias Parreaux and Nati Gomez do a series of one hour talk-back radio shows with Radio Lac. The shows are hosted by Benjamin Smadja. The promotional article was done by Roxane Cattaneo.
2018-09-27: Mathieu Elias Parreaux and François Thiébaud file the articles of association establishing a new company, Parreaux, Thiébaud & Partners Sàrl. The incorporation is processed and published on 2018-10-24.
2019-10-22: François Thiébaud is removed as an administrator/director of Parreaux, Thiébaud & Partners Sàrl. No reasons are given for this change and he continues to be in the name of the company and he continues to appear in the list of employees.
2021-04-28: Nicolas Gillard, president of the Conférence latine des Bâtonniers and Julie Krattinger, Secretary general of the Ordres des Avocats Vaudois, send a warning about Parreaux Thiebaud & Partners to their counterparts in the cantons of Fribourg, Bern, Geneva, Jura, Neuchatel, Ticino, Vaud and Valais. The warning was published on the web site of the Ordre des Avocats Genève and then removed (see below).
2021-06-10: a newsletter from the Ordre des Avocats Genève states that Parreaux Thiebaud & Partners was discussed in a meeting of their council (page 9) and they would take legal action against the firm (page 52):
Procédures disciplinaires
L’ODA a également dû saisir la justice contre Parreaux, Thiébaud & Partners.
The names of the council members are listed: Philippe Cottier (Rhone Avocats), Miguel Oural (Lenz & Staehelin), Sandro Vecchio (Degni & Vecchio), Arun Chandrasekharan (Des Gouttes), Alessandro de Lucia (Ferrero De Lucia Avocats), Myriam Fehr-Alaoui (Niederer Kraft Frey), Sandrine Giroud (Lalive), Karin Grobet Thorens (GTHC Avocates), Sonia Ryser (Locca Pion et Ryser), Hadrien Mangeat, Lionel Halpérin and Grégoire Mangeat.
I could not find any evidence that the Ordre des Avocats Genève has alerted clients or the public.
Why was there a delay of 22 months between the moment the Swiss legal profession had such serious concerns about the scandal and the point at which FINMA published a ban?
If the lawyers' associations all knew about this at the highest level and they failed to inform FINMA then it brings into question the competence of all the Swiss lawyers.
If the lawyers' association did inform FINMA in 2021 then it raises questions about how FINMA could take so long to act.
2021-09-29: Mathieu Parreaux and Hodan Parreaux-Hussein restructure the partnership as a Société Anonyme with themselves as directors
2021-11-11 (Remembrance Day): Mathieu Parreaux of Geneva and his colleagues Bader Miloud and Antoine Scié, both residing in France, form a new company STARDOM SA at the same address as Justicia SA, Avenue des Grandes-Communes 8, 1213 Petit-Lancy, CHE-463.310.885. The stated goals of the company:
But: de développer une activité dans le secteur des technologies financières par le développement, la mise en œuvre et la promotion d'une plateforme faisant usage de technologies basées sur internet, notamment - mais pas exclusivement - des technologies de la chaîne de blocs et plus généralement fournir toutes prestations de services et conseils en matière financière et gestion d'actifs
In other words, crypto-currencies. Are they qualified to trade cryptocurrencies? Are they even qualified to practice law? Some of the biggest crypto-currency businesses, like FTX, have been nothing more than Ponzi schemes.
The record states that the new company received equity of CHF 100,000 upon founding. How could they invest this money in a new company if they didn't have resources to properly support clients of the existing business Parreaux, Thiébaud & Partners?
2022-01-26 (Australia Day): Parreaux, Thiébaud & Partners SA is renamed to Justicia SA. Did this name change come about because the previous name was mentioned in the council minutes? The name Justicia is far more generic and widely used in different contexts, allowing the business to evade controversy in search results.
2022-09-12: STARDOM SA revises their name to Atlas Capital SA and changes their objectives to the management and investment in real estate:
Nouveau but: but la gestion de biens mobiliers, effectuer toutes opérations de placement, notamment financières pour son propre compte, à l'exclusion de toutes opérations immobilières n'ayant pas une affectation exclusivement commerciale.
2022-10-26: Bader Miloud and Antoine Scié are removed as directors of Atlas Capital SA, formerly STARDOM SA. Now Mathieu Parreaux is the sole director.
Were the other directors sacked or did they quit?
Both Bader Miloud and Antoine Scié were also listed as employees of Parreaux, Thiébaud & Partners / Justicia SA. If they quit, was it because the company was under investigation? Were they co-conspirators or were they victims?
2023-01-27: Parreaux's business partner, François Thiébaud files to create a new company Soocial SA. Justicia SA had been registered in Canton Geneva. The new company is filed in the corporate registry for the Canton of Vaud. By using a different director (Thiébaud's name wasn't in the registration of Justicia SA), a different Canton and an obscure company name, it appears they are doing all this under the radar so that they will be able to complete the registration quickly and get approval for a company bank account.
The filing tells us that they had another CHF 100,000 of cash to deposit as the initial equity in the new company. Is this money that could have been used to pay out creditors of the old firm? If this money had been acquired by the unauthorized promotion of an insurance-like product, how could they move it around so easily?
The cumulative amount of cash used to found both Atlas Capital SA (formerly STARDOM SA) and also Soocial SA is CHF 200,000.
The filing includes the following notes about the aims of Soocial SA:
But: la société a pour but l'organisation d'évènements de tous types ainsi que toute activité s'y rapportant directement ou indirectement.
Thiébaud has signed a document stating that this company was created for the organization of events (l'organisation d'évènements) and doesn't mention legal services. This reinforces my perception that this was being created under the radar.
It is an odd coincidence. A lot of the recent Debian scandals started when I raised concerns about people trafficking Albanian women to events in open source software.
2023-02-14: Hodan Parreaux-Hussein sends me an email telling me that I should contact her colleague Maître Pierre-André Oberson, Etude Lexiss in Lausanne for assistance with the Debian trademark dispute. Maître Oberson has done nothing.
Subject: Re: Votre cas : Procédure d'opposition Date: Tue, 14 Feb 2023 13:48:58 +0100 From: Hodan Parreaux <h.parreaux@justicia.ch> To: Daniel Pocock <daniel@softwarefreedom.institute> Cher Monsieur, Je vous remercie de votre confirmation des conditions de la prise en charge de votre dossier. Dès lors, je vous transmets les coordonnées de notre avocat partenaire sur Lausanne: Etude Lexiss, Maître Pierre-André Oberson [LinkedIn] Avenue de la Gare 1 1003 Lausanne Tél: 021.321.90.01 Bien cordialement. Hodan Parreaux Directrice Générale Siège de Genève Avenue des Grandes-Communes 8 1213 Petit-Lancy https://www.justicia.ch/ <https://www.ptpartners.ch/> Tél: 022.716.92.60
Notice that Madame Parreaux does not write her double-barreled surname in full. In all the official documents it is Parreaux-Hussein. Is she concerned that the subset of Swiss with racist tendencies may be more favorable to Parreaux on its own? Or is she concerned about the baggage associated with the name Hussein?
2023-02-16: the creation of the new company Soocial SA appears in the public register after a two and a half week delay.
2023-03-21: annual report from the Ordre des Avocats Genève mentions the council discussed le cabinet juridique Parreaux, Thiébaud & Partners. They have failed to notice the company has been using a new name, Justicia SA, for over a year. No details are provided about the exact date of the meeting when the fraud was discussed.
The names of the council members are listed: Miguel Oural (Lenz & Staehelin), Sandrine Giroud (Lalive), Philippe Jacquemoud (Jacquemoud Stanislas), Myriam Fehr-Alaoui (Niederer Kraft Frey), Karin Grobet Thorens (GTHC Avocates), Daniel Kinzer (CMS von Erlach Partners SA), Saverio Lembo (Bär & Karrer), Sonia Ryser (Locca Pion et Ryser), Roxane Sheybani (Oratio Fortis Avocates), Didier Nsanzineza (Kellerhals Carrard), Philippe Cottier (Rhône Avocats), Lionel Halpérin.
2023-04-04: FINMA decision to ban Mathieu Parreaux from work relating to insurance, published without any explanation, without any effort to publicize the decision or notify the clients
2023-04-06: Parreaux, Thiébaud & Partners Sàrl is placed in liquidation
2023-04-06: Justicia SA is placed in liquidation
2023-04-14: Josef Gabrieli, notary for the Canton of Schwyz, signs a name change for the new company Soocial SA to become Justiva SA. Due to bureaucracy, there will be a delay of some weeks before the name change is known publicly.
2023-04-14: Mathieu Parreaux sends emails to clients announcing that FINMA has closed Justicia SA and asking people to pay for a new membership with Justiva SA. Parreaux's email does not disclose that he is personally subject to a FINMA ban.
How can the Swiss lawyers abandon cases that are in progress at the old firm and move on to a new firm?
How would people feel if the driver of a Swiss train simply jumped out of the train, letting it run down the tracks out of control?
How would it look if a surgeon just decided to walk out and move to a different job in the middle of a surgical procedure on a patient?
2023-04-17: Atlas Capital SA, formerly STARDOM SA, where Mathieu Parreaux is the sole director after the other directors were excluded, establishes a branch in the Canton of Neuchatel. That is the same Canton that hosted DebConf13, where I did a lot of work as a volunteer and got paid nothing for it. The official registration notes the Atlas Capital SA branch is at the Coworking Neuchâtel SARL, place Numa-Droz 2, 2000 Neuchâtel. (OpenStreetmap)
Coincidentally, that is the same address as IBM Red Hat in Switzerland.
In 2022, a legal panel declared that IBM Red Hat's attempt to censor WeMakeFedora.org was an act of harassment undertaken in bad faith. It smells a lot like the more recent attacks that the Swiss rascists at Walder Wyss are making on my work.
2023-04-19: Walder Wyss SA sends an email to clients stating that they have been appointed as liquidators for Justicia SA.
Walder Wyss does not mention the ban on Mathieu Parreaux, despite the fact that Parreaux is actively contacting clients and trying to bring them over to his new venture Justiva SA.
2023-04-24: Walder Wyss SA sends another email to clients:
Vous avez déclaré un sinistre à Justicia SA en liquidation et un dossier est actuellement ouvert à ce sujet :
Justicia SA en liquidation ne fournit plus aucune prestation juridique.
Les clients dont les dossiers nécessitaient objectivement une action juridique urgente ont été contactés individuellement.
L’Etude Walder Wyss SA n’est pas en mesure de vous assister dans ce cadre, vu sa qualité de liquidateur de Justicia SA en liquidation.
It states that for urgent matters, Walder Wyss SA will contact clients individually but for everything else, they will not give any help.
No individual contact was ever received from Walder Wyss SA.
No service was provided.
The email does not make any comment on the serious ethical questions at hand: how will legal claims and related data be handled in those cases where Walder Wyss is representing the adverse party in a dispute?
Walder Wyss is a large and expensive law firm that typically works for big businesses. According to the PME Magazine press report from 2018, seventy five percent of Justicia SA clients are small businesses. What we have here is a situation where the lawyers for big businesses have raided the dossiers of lawyers for small businesses. They have failed to declare conflicts of interest. They have failed to give compensation.
It brings to mind the hack on the adultery web site Ashley Madison. Justicia SA records may include details of clients who received criminal convictions, complicated disputes between family members and grievances in Swiss workplaces. A small company like this typically uses a lot of laptops and insecure cloud accounts. The liquidator may not even know about all the laptops and personal devices containing data. Some employees may have simply walked away with them, sold them or given their laptop to their children.
As the data gradually gets copied, leaked or siphoned off by trojans, we may see former clients committing suicide, a lot like the Ashley Madison suicides.
2023-04-25 (ANZAC Day): Walder Wyss SA sends their third and last email about Justicia SA. They ask for any creditors to submit demands within 5 working days, in other words, before 2 May. Given that 1 May is a public holiday, many people take vacation either side of the long weekend and many may not have seen or acted on this email before the deadline.
2023-05-11: the name change from Soocial SA to Justiva SA becomes visible on the public register. Due to the delay, it may not have been noticed by any investigation on behalf of the liquidator.
2023-06-16: Atlas Capital SA, formerly STARDOM SA, where Mathieu Parreaux is the sole administrator, registers another change to the goals of his company. Originally it was cryptocurrencies, then it was real-estate, now he states that the company exists for advising clients about tax and inheritance matters:
Nouveau but: le conseil en matière d'optimisation fiscale et patrimoniale, pour les particuliers et les entreprises.
2023-06-23: Justiva SA formally registers a branch office in Canton Geneva, using the same address as the previous company Justicia SA and appointing the FINMA disqualified Mathieu Elias Parreaux as a director with individual signing authority.
2023-06-30: Atlas Capital SA, formerly STARDOM SA, removes Mathieu Parreaux as a director and appoints Hodan Parreaux-Hussein as the director. Hodan Parreaux-Hussein resides in Carouge, the same district where Mathieu Parreaux resides.
In the recent scandals in free and open source software, we've seen various cases where people appointed romantic partners to various roles, for example, as President of the Open Source Initiative (OSI). Do these practices elicit confidence in the integrity of our professions?
2023-07-05: just as European summer begins and people leave for vacation, Walder Wyss SA files the dissolution of Justicia SA, the completion of the bankruptcy.
2023-08-30: Walder Wyss SA removes their own name from the Parreaux, Thiébaud & Partners Sàrl file.
2023-08-31: Walder Wyss SA removes their own name from the Justicia SA file.
2023-09-19:Gaelle Jeanmonod at FINMA puts a summary of the investigation on the FINMA web site, but she has deleted all the names and even the dates too.
Here is an example:
If we can't see the dates, how can we place FINMA's actions into the timeline above to see how they interact with placement of equity into alternative companies?
In which year was FINMA first warned about Parreaux Thiebaud & Partners / Justicia SA / Justiva SA?
Did FINMA ever receive a warning from the senior lawyers in the bar association or were they only tipped off by members of the public?
When did FINMA first begin an investigation?
On which date did FINMA first notify Parreaux Thiebaud & Partners / Justicia SA to cease business?
Is there anybody here who was not acting in bad faith at some point?
2023-10-02: Mathieu Parreaux makes a post on LinkedIn telling people that he has now been appointed director of Atlas Capital SA, despite the fact he was removed as a director and put his wife in charge 4 months prior. The post receives likes and comments from various people, including Kamal Gouaamar (CEO & Founder Compareprime), Rafael Da Silva (Conseiller en financement, Resolve) and Nicolas Pfister (CEO, Pfister Swiss Luxury Group).
2023-10-08: While trying to access the web site of Atlas Capital SA, formerly STARDOM SA, it was not responding. Snapshots are available in the WayBack Machine.
The LinkedIn page of Atlas Capital SA still shows that the employees are Mathieu Parreaux and Antoine Scié.
The page includes links to related companies:
- Justiva SA
- Serenity Partners
- Luxity.ch
- SAFE - Swiss Accoutning Fiduciary Experts - would you feel SAFE with these people?
Practicing law without a license in Switzerland
According to that report from the PME Magazine in 2018, Mathieu Parreaux had ten jurists working for him.
The web sites have been taken down but they are still available in the Wayback Machine.
We can look up the names of the employees and put them into the search form at the bar association to see if they are real lawyers or maybe they are simply practicing law without a license.
Parreaux Thiébaud & Partners (PT Partners) web site in WayBack machine, formerly at https://ptpartners.ch.
Justicia SA web site in WayBack machine, formerly at https://justicia.ch.
Canton Geneva bar association: verify a lawyer is licensed.
Canton Vaud bar association: verify a lawyer is licensed.
Canton Valais bar association: verify a lawyer is licensed.
Swiss (national) bar association: verify a lawyer is licensed.
The name of each Swiss "lawyer" was identified from the Wayback Machine and email correspondence. The names of these Swiss "jurists" were entered into the search facility for each Canton and these are the results as of today, 8 October 2023. The search doesn't tell us if they were previously qualified or if they were ever suspended from practicing. The vast majority of these Swiss "lawyers" do not currently hold a license to practice law.
| Name | Geneva | Vaud | Valais | Remains with Justiva SA? | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mathieu Elias Parreaux | N | N | N | Y | Director but not licensed |
| Hodan Parreaux-Hussein | N | N | N | Y | Director but not licensed |
| François Thiébaud | N | N | N | Y | Director but not licensed |
| Arnaud Parreaux | N | N | N | Y | |
| Luc Zimmerman | N | N | N | has become municipal council member in Geneva | |
| Antoine Scié | N | N | N | ? | Atlas Capital SA, also at Luxity.ch, shares the same business address as Justicia SA in Geneva. |
| Bader Miloud | N | N | N | Now at Luxity.ch, shares the same business address as Justicia SA in Geneva. | |
| Miguel Dos Reis | N | N | N | Now working in Dilytics, a finance company, as a coach for startups. Dilytics shares the same business address as Justicia SA in Geneva. | |
| Julien Fivaz | Y | N | N | now working at Evidentia Avocats, Carouge, Geneva | |
| Sarra Rouached | N | N | N | studying medicine | |
| Thierry Sticher | Y | N | N | VS Avocats, but not registered in VS | |
| Elias Fezza | N | N | N | Own business in France and at Rive Avocats in Geneva. LinkedIn welcome post in Justia SA. | |
| Emma Delannoy | N | N | N | Now at Academic Work Geneva, a recruiting and payroll administration company | |
| Taïba Faik | N | N | N | Gestionnaire assurances. SAWI. Gland VD | |
| Bertrand Praz | N | N | N | Y | Born 18.11.1965 - retired? |
| Gerardo | |||||
| Enzo Uva | N | N | N | moved to Advice Concept, a financial advice business | |
| Océane Sublet (Océane Perrin) | N | N | N | Stayed with Justiva/Justicia until June 2023 and then went to work as client advisor at Zurich Insurance | |
| Loic Blandin | N | N | N | Y | |
| Djaouida Zabour-Bouhadjar | N | N | N | Y | |
| Léonora Bushi | N | N | N | Y | |
| Didem Aslan | N | N | N | Y | There is a woman with the same name at AXA but they are not the same person |
| Mélanie de Oliveira Borges | N | N | N | now working as a medical secretary | |
| Nadica Conchatupa | N | N | N | Now employed in state guardianship for vulnerable adults (SPAd Genève) | |
| Joao Rodrigues Boleiro | N | N | N | Working for Geneva Business News | |
| Aleksandra Saczkowski | N | N | N | Now a professor at the Institut Capacité en droit, a law school in Geneva | |
| Nadine Adham | N | N | N | ||
| Syndou Konaté | N | N | N | Now at Caritas, a worldwide Catholic charity aiming to reduce poverty. How many people are impoverished by greedy Swiss lawyers? | |
| Nati Gomez | N | N | N | Co-presented a radio show with Mathieu Elias Parreaux using the name Litigium | |
| Carlos Lopes Barbosa | N | N | N | Was in the Swiss army | |
| Marcel Gottofrey | N | N | N | Worked for Patria Vie (life insurance), acquired by Helvetia, for 32 years before joining the Ponzi scheme of Parreaux / Justicia. Personal web site tells us he retired in 2016, did he join Parreaux as a business partner? The personal web site gives advice about Swiss law and insurance topics. | |
| Stéphanie Chadli | N | N | N | ||
| Chabelis Lima Dominguez | N | N | N | ||
| Arbesa Kovaci | N | N | N |
Out of all these Swiss "lawyers", only two, Thierry Sticher and Julien Fivaz, are currently licensed to practice at the bar in Geneva. The rest of them lack authorization to practice at the bar in any Canton of Switzerland.
Did any of these people ever have a law license in the past? If so, why were their licenses revoked? Why doesn't the search facility from the bar association allow us to see any details?
The Swiss justice system, the cover up of this scandal, moving these people to other firms where they can do the same thing again all goes hand in hand with bad faith.
The bar association knew and covered it up
In my previous blog posts, I've examined the manner in which the Catholic Church silenced abuse victims with payments and confidentiality agreements. Church leaders knew that certain priests were pedophiles but they covered this up and moved them from one place to the next.
When I look at the way in which the Swiss bar association has covered up the history of these Swiss "lawyers", I can't help thinking of the manner in which the Church covered up abuse. These people left their clients with enormous problems but they can recycle their reputations and go to work in other companies. Is that an accident or is it wilful negligence by the bar association?
Switzerland has a population of approximately 8 million people. In other words, it is not a very big country.
There are only a few law schools in Switzerland, many of the law students study together. They socialize together. Some of them grew up in the same valley, they may be cousins. A lot of the Swiss lawyers have what can be described as ingrained Conflicts of Interest.
On top of that, Swiss and German cultures have a huge emphasis on covering up anything that could be even remotely inconvenient. That is why the Germans have a huge obsession with covering up identity fraud in the FSFE and Debian has a huge obsession with covering up the Debian Day volunteer suicide. Germans, debianists and Swiss putting their reputations ahead of the public interest, even if the clients of this dodgy law firm are screwed over before the tribunals.
According to the records, Mathieu Elias Parreaux is domiciled in Carouge, a suburb in the city and canton of Geneva.
As mentioned in the chronological record above, l'Ordre des avocats Genève received complaints against Parreaux as early as 2021.
The complaint was sent to the presidents (Bâtonniers) of each bar association in April 2021. The bar association of Geneva even published it on their web site.
Yet when we try to access that link today, it tells us that the document doesn't exist. Somebody has deleted it. The lawyers don't want us to know that they knew about this crisis two years before FINMA.
The original publication of the alert is captured by the WayBack machine.
When we try to access the same link today, we get this cover-up:
Given that hardly anybody in this firm had a law license, how could the bar assocation of Geneva turn a blind eye?
Somebody has deleted the warning about Mathieu Parreaux, Thiébaud & Partners / Justicia SA from the web site of the Ordre des avocats Genève. Could this deletion be an act of bad faith?
The standard you walk past is the standard you accept.
FINMA and Swiss judicial system accused of bad faith in various cases
FINMA and the Swiss government put the CHF 3 billion payment to shareholders ahead of the CHF 20 billion of unpaid debts to bondholders. They did so in the hope that newspaper headlines would give an unreasonably positive view of Switzerland.
Likewise, with FINMA and the lawyer's association covering up for their colleagues, they are hoping to give an inflated view of the integrity of their profession. In reality, many of the lawyers are related to each other or attended school together. Justice is out of reach for foreigners and small businesses in Switzerland.
If the system runs on bad faith, how can they accuse anybody else of bad faith?
Please see the dedicated micro-site for Swiss JuristGate.