Von Roll and Saddam Hussein's Supergun
Iraq's purpose for constructing the long-range "Supergun," which measured almost 500 feet in length and 3 feet in caliber, was to fire a ton of anthrax on Israel. On March 20, 1991, the Neue Zuercher Zeitung, a newspaper in Bern, Switzerland, reported that Von Roll was accused of actively supplying Iraq with materials to construct Hussein's 'Supergun' before armed conflict in the Gulf began. The newspaper reported that two Von Roll shipments were seized in Germany during May of 1990 by the Swiss police and Justice Department. Von Roll had declared and labeled these shipments as components for stamping and forging presses. After investigation of the shipments, however, German armaments experts and the Swiss authorities agreed that these boxes, bound for Iraq, contained war materials. The Swiss also revealed that Von Roll had already exported 18 shipments to Iraq with similar material, at a value of more than 5 million francs, between February and April, 1990. (See also Waste Not # 200.) On January 31, 1996, a Swiss Federal Court found three Von Roll executives, including the former chairman of Von Roll, Heinz W. Frech, "guilty...of illegally exporting parts of a planned 'super gun' to Iraq." Reuters reported on the guilty verdict on February 1, 1996, and noted that "Swiss law forbids firms making arms sales to foreign governments without permission."
Von Roll: Connections to 'Organized Crime'
"The definition of 'organized crime' is generally assumed to be merely another term for the Mafia, or traditional organized crime families. However, now the term 'organized crime' may be applied to many crimnal enterprises with divergent interests. Any enterprise which is organized to circumvent the law for profit may properly be described as 'organized crime.' "
Edwin Miller, San Diego County District Attorney (California), "The San Diego Report, " July 1992.
Von Roll and the Union Bank of Switzerland (UBS)
The bank that loaned Von Roll the money to build WTI is the Union Bank of Switzerland. According to the Sept. 1992 issue of Mother Jones: It was UBS, "according to congressional hearings on international money laundering, that helped the now- notorious [BCCI] skirt Panamanian money-laundering laws by flying cash out of the country in private jets, and that was used by Ferdinand Marcos to stash 325 tons of Philippine gold around the world... [UBS also] surfaced in the scandal that resulted in the downfall of the Australian Labor government in 1976 and, later, in the Nugan Hand Bank scandal." UBS is also known to have been a partner in a BCCI bank in Geneva