A Swiss man was found guilty of holding a former employee captive and threatening to cut off one of his fingers with a pair of garden shears in a dispute involving the sale of a jointly managed CBD growing operation.
The Bern-Mittelland Regional Court held the unidentified man, a former trade unionist, guilty of “deprivation of liberty and coercion.” (Swiss courts normally withhold the names of defendants in court proceedings.) He received a 13-month sentence, which was suspended by the court in lieu of four years’ probation.
Dispute over sale price
The two men, who together tended a CBD growing facility that started in 2021, had argued over a sale price after agreeing to a deal in which the second man, who’d worked as a gardener, expressed an interest in buying the owner out.
The gardener told the court he believed he’d completed the deal when he paid the defendant 65,000 francs (~€68,000), but the seller later demanded an additional 210,000 francs €224,000), eventually reducing the extra payment to 85,000 francs (€91,000)
“I felt cheated,” the gardener told the court of the deal, for which there was no written contract.
Then things got worse.
Locked up
After being summoned to the CBD facility by the defendant, the gardener was seized by the owner, a colleague and five other men described as guards, who took his away his keys and mobile phone, he testified. With doors to the place locked, the owner then threatened to cut off one of his fingers with garden shears if he did not immediately make a bank transfer, the gardener told the court.
A second employee of the business testified that when he showed up during the confrontation he was also stripped of his phone and held captive. “It was made clear to me in no uncertain terms that we couldn’t just leave,” he told the court, saying he was even accompanied to the toilet and had to leave the door open. “I was watched every step of the way,” he said.
‘The wrong people’
After the gardener’s bank became suspicious and repeatedly blocked the transfer, the men were let go after more than five hours as captives. The gardener transferred the requested amount after another call from the owner the next day, the court heard.
Asked by the judge why he didn’t go to the police immediately after being released, the gardener said he didn’t have the courage.
“If I report the wrong people and they are organized, then good night,” he told the court.
Reporting by Berner Zeitung