Man Alive

Trouble in Paradise (1981x20)

Air date: May 21, 1981

In Switzerland, almost every mp is on the board of a bank or a sizeable company, often both. Jack Pizzey examines connections between the state and big business. An executive of a multinational reports his company to the EEC for breaking its trading laws; he is arrested by the police and imprisoned. An English woman working in Africa buys a Swiss-made medicine banned in the West; she nearly dies. The methods of a baby-food firm selling milk substitute in the Third World break World Health Organisation codes. Could these things happen if the directors of the companies did not sit in board-rooms one day and in parliament the next?