Tommaso...Paul Erdman was a PhD. at the University of Zurich in economics I believe. He was one of the few non-Swiss ferengi let into the charmed circle of Swiss academia/financial elite. He was also an American, a Jew, and went on to be a Siwss banker. If I recall corectly Erdman started or represented something like the United California bank that went defunct in the eraly 1970's. The Swiss banking authorities blamed him personally for the bank's loss. Threw him in jail. He went from being a glitterati... to a bucket and a blanket and a twenty watt bulb for company.
No habeus corpus in Switzerland. You just rot until the authorities in their own good time get around to you...
The Swiss authorities held Erdman for some months without charging him as, at least in ERdman's novels, is their predeliction.
Erdman was treated terrribly, his reputation was trashed, he was financially ruined. Your words are sort of confirmation of these echos and how long they last. "Wasn't it Erdman who spent time in a Swiss prison for a questionable commodity trade?"
No. That is Marc Rich who lives in Zug and who is a fugitive from an American court and runs a multi-billion dollar commodity operation from Switzerland (formerly an American Marc is now Spanish).
Erdman got out of jail eventually and he was deported from Switzerland.
He was broke, a pariah in the banking world and he decided quite bravely to parlay his knowledge of economic and finance into writing novels with a financial bent...with an underlying bent of total and sterling contempt for Swiss people, Swiss anything.
Oddly, though Erdman's "reputation" as an economist is somewhat clouded by the above events....yet, Erdman the novelist has done more to discredit Switzerland as a haven of respectability and probrity than even all the press reports about hidden, sequestered halocaust victim's loot that at first the Swiss adamently insisted didn't exist.
Erdman ironically has had the final laugh here against the Swiss. It is his vision of the Swiss and their bent not level financial playing field in Switzerland's banking world .... that prevails.
My best,
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