The mayor of Crans-Montana is among the nine under investigation for the Constellation fire
The list of suspects in the Constellation New Year’s Eve massacre, in which 41 people died, is expanding. The Valais prosecutor’s office has in fact also included the mayor of Crans-Montana, Nicolas Féraud, and other figures from the local administration in the register of suspects. For him, the disputed charges are fire, murder and negligent injury and violations of the responsibilities and duties imposed by law on municipalities.
The new suspects
Immediately after the fire there were loud calls for his resignation. The Swiss newspaper 24 Heures also recalled that, at the end of January, the mayor had been sued by the lawyers of a young seriously burned victim and her parents. And now Féraud will have to answer to the same charges brought against the spouses Jacques and Jessica Moretti. Alongside him, in the register of suspects, appear those who held positions in the administration of Crans-Montana and in the municipality of Chermignon, later annexed to the former. The register of suspects, therefore, includes the councilor in charge with security duties until December 2024, now an “alternate” member of the Valais Parliament, Kévin Barras, and those who had or still have delegations on controls between Chermignon and Crans-Montana, namely Pierre Albéric Clivaz, Rudy Tissières and Baptiste Cotter.
The first names
This brings the number of suspects to nine. The judiciary had in fact already included in the register of suspects the owners of the Constellation, Jacques and Jessica Moretti, the municipality’s public safety manager, Christophe Balet and his predecessor, Ken Jacquemoud. From the first checks, flaws in the controls by the Municipality had already emerged: only three inspections had been carried out in ten years.
The first step of cooperation between Italy and Switzerland
The first operational meeting between the prosecutors of the Canton of Valais and those of the Rome Prosecutor’s Office is scheduled between 23 and 27 March, which could mark a turning point. Italian investigators should in fact be given the opportunity to examine the dossier and therefore identify the useful documents for our country’s investigation. Meanwhile, the deputy general prosecutor, as well as the holder of the file, Catherine Seppey, will restart the interrogations on March 25, hearing the photographer of the Crans-Montana club, Rozerin Ozkaytan. The lawyer of the family of one of the injured Italian girls, Fabrizio Ventimiglia, commented: «I hope that the Swiss public prosecutor will speed up the investigation because we cannot have long deadlines, given the seriousness of the drama, and then also the expansion of the investigations to ascertain the responsibilities of the municipality, of the mayor and of the safety councilor, and an ad hoc evaluation on the management of the rescue operations which were very deficient».
