The Swiss government has opened an investigation into a decades-old spying affair involving Swiss firm Crypto, following reports by Swiss public broadcaster SRF, German broadcaster ZDF and The Washington Post.
The government confirmed on Tuesday that it had opened an investigation into the reports that Crypto, a Zug-based communications encryption firm, was secretly owned by the CIA and West German intelligence services for decades.
The services jointly bought the business in 1971, hiding behind the façade of a Liechtenstein-registered foundation, according to 280 pages of documents, reported on in Switzerland by public broadcaster SRF.